In the twilight we pressed on, through bright green groves studded by brighter golden oranges; through the flame-coloured leaves of the wondrousBois-immortel; through thickets of cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove-shrub trees, till we found ourselves at the base of the hill of La Fleur d'Epée, the sides of which were in a moment covered by the assailants—soldiers, seamen, and marines—scrambling up, under a tremendous fire of grape and musketry, round-shot, shell, and hand-grenades. The whole fortress seemed to be covered by flame, so incessant was the firing that flashed through every loophole and embrasure—over the stone parapets, and through the wooden palisades. Numbers of shells burst as they rose, revolving in mid-air, and their falling fragments killed and wounded several of our men; while, as they exploded elsewhere, pillars of black smoke and earth covered all the slope of the hill.
Led by the captain of theBoyne, the active seamen, with their pikes and cutlasses, were first at the outer palisade. Old Cranky, who was stuck all over pistols, like Paul Jones in the play, came next; and his solitary eye glared round him with grim satisfaction as he perceived his former antagonist, the earl, entering with him side by side, for he was too brave to bear a grudge at any man.
The French advanced work was soon taken—their inlying picket, or mainguard were all shot down or bayoneted; and many of our sailors, with the activity of monkeys, sprang into the embrasures—through which the levelled cannon were belching shot and flame—and there fought hand to hand with the gunners and linesmen, who crowded together on the ramparts; while we, with the battalion of grenadier companies, dashed in the gates, and then a dreadful conflict with the bayonet ensued, for the blacks and malattoes who mingled with the French line fought like incarnate fiends. The storming became a series of duels, in which many perished on both sides, and some frightful wounds were given by point and edge and clubbed musket, before they yielded, and threw down their arms in disorder.
Every shot found a hundred echoes in the cliffs of Morne Mascot, which overhung us, and in the distance we heard the sound of musketry as the General, Sir Charles Grey, assailed and stormed the batteries of Fort Louis and the Isle of Hogs, which commanded the harbour of Point à Pitre.
In themêléeI have described we lost our senior captain, John Macdonald of Kinlochmoidart, a soldier worthy of the gallant race from which he sprang, and ever ready to lead in desperate work. His family having (as Glendonwyn phrased it) "come down the brae wi' the auld Stuarts," he was animated by all the pride and high courage of the palmiest days of Celtic chivalry; but a ball from the upper rampart pierced his breast; he fell, and the hand of his old friend Glendonwyn was the first to assist him.
"My dear Glenny, I am wounded—mortally wounded!" he exclaimed, and fainted.
"Carry him to the rear," cried the Earl of Kildonan, whose cheek was streaming with blood, having been laid open by a sabre; "he comes of a race that have seldom died on other bed than this."
He was borne out of the press, and conveyed on board theWinchelsea, but died of his wound soon after the capture of Guadaloupe.
Colonel du Plessis refused to surrender, and, after a severe single combat, was disarmed and made prisoner by Jack Haystone, the lieutenant of our company. Just as he was leaning breathlessly on the sword of the French commandant, a ball shivered the blade in his hand. Haystone fell flat on his face, and at that moment a French grenadier, despite the entreaties of Du Plessis, was about to bayonet him, when Jack exclaimed in French, which he spoke fluently,—
"Hold! I have a favour to ask."
"Say it," said the soldier, raising his threatening weapon.
"If youwillstab me, let it be in the breast, that I may die at once, and lest my body be found with a dishonourable wound."
"Rise,mon capitaine—I am one of the old Régiment de Turenne!" said the grenadier proudly and sullenly, as he flung down his musket.
The scene about the shattered gate as day dawned was revolting. The dead and wounded lay there in literalheaps, and among the former was my poor friend Jack Joyce, the marine, who had been shot through the lungs. In one place where a large shell had exploded I counted about twenty dead men all huddled together.
Elsewhere, I saw that many of the wounded retained the attitudes they had assumed when death-shots struck them. Here lay a man reclined against a bastion, with a handless arm upraised; there lay another whose head and breast had been torn to pieces by a shower of canister. Close by was an officer with his handkerchief stuffed into his breast, and drenched with the blood of a wound from which the last life-drops were oozing, as his eyelids drooped and his eyes glazed mournfully over. Across a heap of bodies, a mustachoed grenadier of the old 37th, or King Louis's, lay on his back; the left hand yet grasped the musket, and in his clenched teeth was the half-bitten cartridge, the black powder of which was mingled with the blood and foam that left his pallid lips together, matting about his black beard and mustachoes.
Our Scots Fusiliers suffered severely, and lost there many a poor lad who had first heard the drum beaten and the fife blown "for glory" at the village fair, or in the pastoral glen where his father's cottage stood; but now, all gashed and dead, they would hear that fife and drum no more! Amid all this horribledébris, I remember perceiving a French officer, standing a little apart from the prisoners, with his epaulettes in his hands. Lord Kildonan inquired the reason of this.
"To avoid the indignity of having them torn from my shoulders," he replied, haughtily.
"Torn!—by whom?"
"Plunderers. I have worn these epaulettes at Versailles—ay, in the same quadrille with Marie Antoinette. I have worn them in battle against the Austrians, and I would not have them desecrated."
"Then replace them, monsieur," said the earl; "it is not the custom of British soldiers to plunder either the living or the dead."
Mr. Williams, our minister, in his account of this affair, says: "Being the only chaplain present, I went up early in the evening, as soon as the action was over, to bury the dead. At the foot of the hill lay several of our seamen badly wounded. A little further on, under some tall trees, were several naval officers reposing after the fatigues of the morning; their men were not far from them. Further on a party of wounded prisoners were brought in by our people, and at the gates of the fort lay a heap of slain, who had died by the sword or the bayonet. Within it lay a multitude of miserable creatures expiring of their wounds, and many of our own people in the same situation. In the midst of this his Excellency [Sir Charles Grey] was writing his despatches, at a table on which lay an artilleryman sleeping, being overcome with fatigue, and the good general would not allow him to be disturbed."
After the slaughter and horrors we had witnessed, there was something quite refreshing in the humane sentiment, that prevented our gallant old leader from rousing the worn-out gunner, who had fallen asleep on a table brought forth from Du Plessis' quarters, for the use of the staff.
We had seventy-five killed and wounded in capturing this small fort. Of the French, including blacks and mulattoes, there were killed and taken two hundred and thirty-two.
Such was the storming of Fort Fleur d'Epée, in the island of Guadaloupe, by our losses at which I won my first lieutenantcy.
Flushed by this new conquest, "Hispaniola," was now ourcri de guerre; and while troops, prisoners, sick and wounded were all re-embarked, and the squadron, after being careened and refitted, prepared to unite, previous to attacking that large and valuable island (an intention never carried out), I was ordered to convey thirty French civilians under a cartel to Dominica, while Harry Smith of the Royals, the aide-de-camp, who, as already related, had been wounded by a cannon-shot on our landing, was ordered to convey stores, despatches, and a few captured slaves to Jamaica. For these services, two large ships, formerly privateers (L'EtnaandL'Ami du Peuple), which we found concealed in a cove at Terre d'en Haut, were fitted for sea by the carpenters and riggers of theAdder. Captain Cranky sent a small but well-armed prize-crew under a midshipman on board of each. Smith who was in love with a girl in Jamaica, where he had formerly been stationed, accepted his duty with joy; but I bade adieu to my comrades with a regret that almost amounted to a foreboding, and shifted my traps on board theEtna. He with his sable charge, and I with my jabbering Frenchmen separated, and with a fair wind we bore away from the rocky isles of Los Santos.
Neither of us sailed under convoy; we had no fear of French ships of war, or privateers, as old Sir John Jervis had swept them alike from the Leeward and Windward Isles, and all the Caribean sea.
L'Etnawas a smart and sharply-built vessel, with a low hull, raking masts, pierced for eight twelve-pounders, and all painted black. While in French hands, she did great damage to our West-India trade. Mr. Stanley, a midshipman of theAdder, commanded the prize-crew.
We stood down the Canal des Saintes, and after rounding Point du Vieux Fort of Guadaloupe, we lost sight of Harry Smith's craft, which bore away into the Caribean Sea, while we hauled up for Dominica, on a lovely evening, when the sky was all of a warm lilac hue, which paled to blue as the golden sun sank down and vanished like a flaming shield.
After our separation, the adventures of both were very remarkable. Poor Harry's, at that time, made much more noise than mine, being full of romance, notwithstanding his most unromantic surname; and a narrative of these, written by Haystone of ours, appeared in more than one public journal. As he and they are alike forgotten now, before resuming the thread of my own story, I will briefly relate the strange catastrophe which befell the unfortunate aide-de-camp.
L'Ami du Peuple, after encountering a gale of wind which carried away her topmasts, reached Jamaica; where Smith, after landing his stores and his sable detachment, hastened to the house of M. du Plessis, to whose daughter, Aurore, he was deeply attached. Many of our fellows at this time got themselves into scrapes with the pretty Creoles and Frenchwomen of colour, natheless all the serious disadvantages of making love when in a profuse state of perspiration to a pale damsel who could, to all appearance, remain cool as a cucumber, when the thermometer stood at ninety in the shade, and her European swain was in a melting mood in more ways than one.
Some time before, when Smith was quartered in Jamaica, Kingston had been full of French royalist emigrants or fugitives from the Antilles; and many of these, from being persons of opulence and good position, by their flight and loss of fortune, had been reduced to extreme penury. Most of these emigrants were from Martinique, Marigalante, and Los Santos; but by far the greater number were from Hispaniola. Among those from the latter island, were M. du Plessis, (brother of the colonel whose capture I have just related) and his daughter, Aurore, with a few servants in whom he confided, or who choose to follow his fallen fortune. After his arrival, these were forced, by the pressure of circumstances, to leave him, all, save one, named Scipio, a gigantic negro, to whom he was much attached, although a subtle savage, who, for a time, had served in the coloured bands of Bellegarde and Pelocque.
Aurore was a French girl who possessed a delicacy of beauty that seldom falls to the lot of her countrywomen; but a West-Indian sun often works wonders, for although barely sixteen, she was "rich in all the fascinations of tropical girlishness;" and unmelted by the fiery skies of those regions, her cheeks wore a tinge of red, and ripe as those of any English girl at home; but much of the beauty of Aurore was inherited from her mother, who was descended from the old Spanish settlers in Hispaniola.
In Kingston, the lively little French beauty had many admirers, but she preferred to all others Harry Smith, of the Scots Royals, whose handsome figure and face were displayed to advantage by his brilliant staff uniform. He had fine dark eyes, which generally played the deuce with ladies, who always averred they beheld "in them a deep expression of tenderness not to be described," and so forth; yet I had seen them fiery and stern enough at such times as when the cannon ball from La Fleur d'Epée shaved off his epaulette and a slice off his shoulder with it. In short, he was thebeau idéalof a smart and gentlemanly young officer, without a vestige of the fop about him—for he had seen too much service during the six years he had been in the Royals—"too many hard knocks" as the mess-room phrase is—to be guilty of such folly; and so little Mademoiselle Aurore loved him with all her heart.
On his return to Jamaica, full of the ardour so natural to a young lover, Harry hastened to the house of M. du Plessis, but found, that though the letters of Aurore expressed an undiminished affection, a great change had taken place in the sentiments of the old planter, her father.
News (which, however, proved false) had arrived at Kingston, that the second division of the army from old France, destined to crush the insurgent slaves in the French Antilles, had reached the island of Hispaniola; and M. du Plessis, elated by the prospect of a restoration to fortune and to his extensive estates and plantations, now avowed that which hitherto he had the cunning or the wicked policy to conceal, a decided repugnance for Lieutenant Smith, and refused to permit Aurore to receive his visits.
Harry was as if thunder-struck! He sued, he entreated, he stormed, and poor Aurore was in despair. She wept and prayed, but M. du Plessis remained as inexorable as any father in an old melodrama, and embarked on board of a ship sailing under a cartel, with his wife, his property, and all his black servants whom he had collected—the faithful Scipio included. Poor Harry sprang into a boat, and though still suffering from the effects of his wound, reached the ship, which was then almost ready for sea, and lay in the harbour of Kingston, with her cable hove short upon the anchor, her courses loose, and blue-peter flying at the fore.
With her face covered by a veil, Aurore was seated on the deck; her head reclined upon her mother's breast, and she wept as if her heart was breaking.
Harry approached again; desperation lent him an eloquence that he knew not he possessed, and he urged his suit with the bearing of a gentleman, and with passion, truth, and tenderness. Du Plessis stood with arms folded, and, after hearing him in contemptuous silence—for he seemed to exult in his power to crush and mortify a Briton—ordered him at once to leave the ship, and added some coarse and ungenerous reflections on his country, and on his faith as a Protestant. Finding that pathos and argument alike proved futile, Harry became filled by a sudden fury, and unsheathed his sword.
"Listen to me, Monsieur du Plessis, you are both insolent and hard of heart," he exclaimed; "nothing but the love I bear Aurore, and the respect I am forced to have for you asherfather, prevents me from running you through the body and killing you on the spot! You will tear her from me—my dear, dear Aurore! Be it so; but thus shall she see that I can never survive her loss!"
With these words, the desperate fellow dashed his sword at the feet of the startled planter, and springing overboard, sank instantly.
Boats were promptly lowered to pick him up, but he never rose again.*
* "His unfortunate father, who was in Kingston, when the news reached him, in vain offered a reward of £200 to any person who would bring him the body of his son; but it was never found."—Scottish Reg.1794.
Aurore was borne to her cabin in a state of alternate insensibility and delirium, and in this condition she continued, when, on the evening of the third day, while the mountains of Hispaniola were in sight, Scipio and the other domestics, armed with knives, rose suddenly in the twilight, and, with circumstances of dreadful barbarity, murdered every white person on board, except the miserable girl on whom the "faithful" Scipio pounced as his own particular prey. The negroes then plundered and set fire to the ship, and, leaving the corpses to the spreading flames, went ashore in the largest boat, and, taking Aurore with them, joined the revolted slaves who were still in arms, and who, since the massacre of the whites in August, 1791, had made that beautiful isle a scene of death and desolation.
From that night all trace was lost for ever of the unfortunate Mademoiselle du Plessis.
I have mentioned thatL'Ami du Peuple, the ship in which Smith sailed for Jamaica, had her topmasts carried away by a gale of wind. This occurred when she was somewhere off the long shoal, known as the Avis bank; and the gale was but the skirt of a fearful hurricane, which we also encountered, and by which we were driven as far as to north latitude 15.30, and west longitude 63.15.
The day when Stanley made this observation had been wonderfully serene, even for the tropics; and as evening drew on, a warm lilac tint spread over sea and sky. The wind became variable—by turns stiff and light; the sails at times flapped heavily, and the loose cordage alternately blew out in wide bends, or hung listlessly and still. At such times theEtnarolled drowsily, for there was a mountainous swell upon the glassy sea.
Stanley, the middy in command, seemed to dislike the aspect of the sky; it puzzled him, and he frequently conferred with the older seamen of his crew, who, while acknowledging that they thought the appearance of the atmosphere boded something, added, they "would not have cared about it the value of a quid of bacca, but for that 'ere matter of the rats."
It would seem that theEtna, when first found at Los Santos was infested by thousands of Barbadoes rats, all of which had disappeared when she was refitted for sea; and the old proverb, that "rats leave dangerous places," was repeated gloomily as evening turned into night, and the men of the watch talked under their breath, and rehearsed to each other many a gloomy legend of dangers, to which similar disappearances had been the ominous introduction.
The wind was easterly, and, contrary to the general experience of those who have traversed the Caribean sea, we found it increase in strength, instead of sinking after sunset—till it blew so freshly that sail was taken off the ship.
The atmosphere became thick and misty; like a luminous lamp the red moon appeared for a time at the horizon, and the black and tumbling waves seemed to roll against its disc; but as the haze increased we lost sight of it altogether. Dense black clouds came rapidly up from the north-west, and as they hurried along, they seemed to meet and be torn asunder by the contrary current from the east, which bore us swiftly on. The agitation of the sea increased, and now the waves, that seethed and boiled around us, emitted a strong sulphureous odour. Every moment the wind seemed to grow stronger, and appeared to blow from every point at once.
These phenomena, though not uncommon in those latitudes, made Stanley and his crew anxious.
The sails were still more reduced; the topgallant yards were sent down, the topmasts struck, and every means were taken to make the vessel snug; but she pitched and groaned fearfully; while the atmosphere became more dense, more black, and stifling every moment.
I was sitting under the recess of the poop deck, when suddenly cries of astonishment, if not of fear, burst from the seamen; then their voices were lost in a stupendous sound, like the roaring of a mighty cataract, mingled with the rolling of thunder, while a wondrous gleam of red and ghastly light overspread the sea, revealing every crested wave that rolled in long and watery ridges towards us, and every spar, rope, and block of the vessel's rigging in a glare as from a mighty conflagration.
By one bound I gained the summit of the poop-ladder, and grasping the mizen shrouds, beheld one of those terrible phenomena incident to these tropical seas,—a sight never to be forgotten.
About six miles distant, on our lee-bow, a mighty pyramid of fire was rising from the sea, as if millions of rockets were being vomited forth; the roaring of the water that seethed around the crater of this submarine volcano—for it was one of those terrible examples which Kircher first records as having witnessed in the Azores—had a dreadful sound; and the sulphureous ashes that mingled with the salt steam, and fell like a snow-storm on our deck, were so suffocating that two men became insensible. This thick white powder continued to fall so fast that our persons, the deck, the guns, the rigging, masts, and yards, speedily became as if coated with flour; and the entire ship, in all her details, assumed a phantom-like aspect, as she glided on amid this terrific glare, which for nearly ten minutes overspread the ocean, and made it resemble a sea of flame.
Anon the light sank slowly down; the radiance faded away, and then we heard the angry and hollow roaring of the sea as it was sucked down into the mighty depth of some submarine crater or vortex, the physical construction of which was beyond our conception; but the reflux of the water boiled in hot and seething foam around us, while the spray that flew over the ship to leeward was warm, and became crusted salt in a moment, on the guns, booms, and shrouds.
Many of our seamen and passengers became almost paralysed by astonishment, and we found ourselves all but overwhelmed by the ashy torrent that had fallen upon us, and, amid which, in the gloom that succeeded, our figures seemed like those of indistinct spectres; but now the roaring of the wind, and increasing turbulence of the sea, recalled us to our senses by the natural instinct of self-preservation, for all the skill of seamanship was speedily required. The yards were squared, theEtnawas set before the wind, and we lost no time in spreading every inch of canvas we dared, to escape from the spot; thus, our old privateer flew before the rising tempest and the rolling sea like a veritable phantom ship.*
* In 1720 a column of fire sprang from the sea near Tercera, when an island arose above the surface; and in February, 1811, similar events occurred at the western extremity of the island of St. Michael, when the flames are said to have "risen into the air like a host of sky-rockets, with the usual accompaniments of smoke, ashes, and noise."
By the compass, theEtna'shead lay nearly due north.
The wind soon freed us from the sulphureous ashes which covered our persons and the ship, but the crystalline salt of the spray lay thick and white as hoar frost upon the deck, the gunnels, and studding-sail booms alongside.
The wind still freshened, but a stiff glass of brandy-and-water, together with our excitement, enabled us to pass the night without once thinking of turning in; and by day-dawn we saw land rising under a leaden-hued sky, from a grey and angry sea on our starboard bow, and it was about ten miles off on our beam about one o'clock.
"What do you make it out to be?" I asked Stanley, who was gazing anxiously through his telescope.
"An island," was the curt reply.
"Of course,—but what island?"
"Avis, by the chart,—and Avis it must be by the clouds of birds above it."
"But there are no trees visible."
"The birds lay their eggs in the sand. It is rendered a dangerous place by the number of rocks about; a whole French fleet was wrecked there under the Admiral d'Estres. I have seen old guns lying on the rocks, when off the island in theAdder'sboats. Keep her away a point or so to the eastward,—call the watch and stand by to stow the main-sail and jib."
As the louring day wore on, Stanley became more anxious, and ere long he took the wheel himself, for he was a good seaman as well as a brave young officer. The rocks of Avis soon vanished into the grey obscurity astern, and then I heard Stanley, after assuming his speaking-trumpet, bellow through the gathering gale,—
"Double reef the fore and maintopsails—stow the mizentopsail! quick my lads, or they will be blown from the bolt ropes, or the sticks will go smash by the board."
Amid the furious flapping of the canvas and the roaring of the wind, I heard the voices of the seamen aloft, encouraging each other cheerily as they fulfilled their orders with all the speed and readiness of regular men-of-war's-men.
The sea was so heavy that at times we seemed to be rushing through successive sheets of snow-white foam, and the vessel began to labour greatly. Towards evening we had a glimpse of the sun. Fiery and blood-red, his mighty disc, shorn of every ray, glared at the horizon for a brief space along the waste of seething ocean over which we were careering wildly. We saw—but for a moment—a merchant brig under jury-masts, running on the opposite tack; she was lifted by the reddened sea against this glowing orb. For an instant her black outline, her masts, sails, and bowsprit, were distinct and clear; but the next she was swept away, and we lost sight of her in the dusk and drift as the sun went down, and the clouds of dun and fiery purple piled up like a huge bank, soon to be torn asunder by the wind, enveloped the place of his setting.
The pumps were sounded every half-hour; but the vessel proved tight, and no greater quantity of water than usual was found in them. As the twilight deepened, finding that she began to lurch and roll like a water-logged ship, and that the gale seemed rather to increase than abate, I roused Stanley, who was exhausted and lay under the recess of the poop-deck, asleep. Just as he rose, a mighty wave struck the ship. The volume of dark and foaming water burst in thunder on her starboard quarter, and tearing the boat which hung there from its davits, swept it like a cork away into the trough of the sea.
"Stand by all hands to heave the guns overboard—clear the deck—heave over shot and everything to lighten her!" were now Stanley's orders.
By a rope at the breech and button, and handspikes under the trunnions, our eight 12-pounders, with all their shot and gear, were hoisted over the side and sent surging to the weedy depths below; while we were thus engaged, another dreadful sea struck the ship and swept away the long-boat which was full of live-stock, snapping like silk threads the lashings which bound it to the deck, and carrying it completely over the side, together with two of our men.
The gale was now approaching to a hurricane; but as theEtnasailed bravely, she was hauled to the wind on the port tack.
"Double reef the fore and main-topsail, and lower the yards down on the cap!" was now the order of Stanley.
In a minute after this she gave a mighty lurch, and rolled right over on her beam-ends to starboard, and thus she lay helplessly, with her mast-heads in the sea, the waves of which were roaring, bellowing, and foaming, as if each was rivalling the other in efforts to sink or rend her to pieces.
Clinging to the larboard side of the poop, I got upon the mizen rattlins, which were still a few feet above the sea, and there, though drenched with the spray which flew in showers over me, I had time to breathe—-to utter a few pious invocations—to collect my thoughts and look about me.
I beheld, so far as the darkness, the drifting spray, and the incessant motion of the foundering ship permitted me, a scene of horror, such as I had often read of—often imagined—but never expected to witness or experience. Shrieks to God for aid, mingled with the hollow bellowing of the wind and the roar of the destroying waves, as man after man was torn from the rattlins, the yards, or timber-heads, as the death-clutch failed, and he was swept away into the waste of water, or was dashed again and again by succeeding waves against the wreck. All this when viewed through the darkness of a tempestuous night was terrible—beyond all description terrible!
Wave after wave burst in thundering volume over me, confusing, drenching, and benumbing me; yet I clung desperately to my perch in the mizen rattlins, which were now horizontal, and with each successive sea that struck the wreck sank lower and lower in the water.
Life I wanted now—life under any circumstances, however wretched! Every thought, energy, and faculty became excited, and merged in the passionate longing for life, for self-preservation.
A portion of the maintopsail was still above water; but a mighty wave burst into it and tore away the now horizontal mast with all its gear, and swept it far from the ship into darkness, and with it went poor Stanley and four of his seamen.
By this time I could only see four other men clinging to different parts of the wreck. I called to them repeatedly, but without receiving an answer. They seemed to be stupified. As Falconer says,—
A while they bore th' overwhelming billow's rageUnequal combat with their fate to wage;Till all benumb'd and feeble they foregoTheir slippery holds, and sink to shades below,
and ere long I found myself alone—alone on that surging sea and shattered wreck.
Men toil and struggle bravely, when love, when liberty, and, more than all, whenlifeis at stake. So struggled I on that night of terror.
Clutching fast the wetted shrouds, worn and exhausted by long exposure, by want of sleep, and by excitement, I hoped the hope of the desperate—that, with daybreak, if the ship floated so long, aid might come; a friendly sail might pass, and I might yet be saved, and spared for years to come: yet what right had I to be favoured so specially, when so many poor fellows had perished? The brave, the good, the hardy, and the true!
Strangely enough, at that terrible time frivolous thoughts and trivial incidents of my past years came before me. I counted the rattlins on the shrouds, and watched, with a species of ghastly curiosity or vacant wonder, the snapping of the ship's gear in succession, as the billows broke in foam among the prostrate masts and yards, and shattered top-hamper; and then I would long and pray for the dawn of morning.
The hazy gloom around me was oppressive. I clung as in a dream, mechanically; I scarcely knew at one time whether I was asleep or awake, till suddenly the horrible conviction came over me, that the vessel was settling down, andsinking fast! The broken masts, all shattered now to their round tops, rose slowly and gradually from the water. For some minutes they remained at an angle of forty-five degrees from the surface, and then became more and more erect, as the vessel righted, and sank deeper in the sea, assuming, as she sank, her natural position.
Down—down she went, slowly, surely, and gradually, the waves rolling, as it were, in wild joy over her entire hull. I soon lost sight of the deck, and, as the water approached, I continued to ascend the rattlins until I reached the mizentop. The storm was abating, for the bellowing and fury of the wind were much less; but this change of weather availed me little now, for I had barely reached the mizentop when it vanished, with the last vestiges of the ship into the sea beneath me, and I was tossed hither and thither among the waves. Blinded by spray, and haunted by a fear of sharks, and of the same death by which so many of my late companions had perished, I was not aware for some time that, by chance, or perhaps by that species of attraction by which two bodies or floating substances are drawn together in the water, a topgallant-yard remained close by me, till suddenly, with a sigh of joy, I threw out my arms and clung to it. Again and again I was tossed up among the white foam on the summit of a wave, and then precipitated into the black trough of the sea, twenty feet below; and thus I was rapidly borne hundreds of yards from the place where our hapless ship had foundered, but still I retained my hold.
Then I found, as the dashing of the waves became less, that I was among some of those gigantic plants which grow from the bottom of the sea in these regions, being like prodigious water-docks, with stems eighty or a hundred feet long, and mighty leaves covered with brown slime; and under these theblue sharkglides ever in search of prey. If aught could increase the horror of my situation, it was being swept here and there among these giant weeds, with the incessant dread of being snapped in two by the teeth of the monster fish.
I was becoming careless, weary, and incapable of further exertion, when a wave, larger than any I had hitherto seen, burst like a mountain over me. I felt a mighty shock, and, while believing that all was over, became insensible; yet God was pleased to spare me.
When consciousness returned, I felt on my face the warmth of a hot sunshine, and my first impulse was to strike out and swim, as if still in the ocean. Then starting convulsively, I rose slowly and giddily to find that I had been lying on a dry shingly beach, about two yards from the verge of the sea, which was calm as a mirror, and rippled like an inland lake upon "the unnumbered pebbles" and thick layers of beautiful shells that lay along this unknown shore.
Behind me rose steep black rocks, covered with green waving woods that fringed their summits, and close by lay the spar, by clinging to which my life had probably been saved. A few tortoises were crawling near it, on the shingle. After pausing to rally thought and power of action, I started to my feet, and looked around me. My clothes, a uniform coat and blue pantaloons with Hessian boots, were still moist with my recent immersion; but the saline property of the sea water prevented it from causing ague or other illness.
By the sun's altitude, I judged the time to be about ten in the morning; for my watch had stopped soon after I had been precipitated from the mizen rattlins into the sea.
The rays were scorching now, and they shone with a glitter and brilliance upon the grey rocks and palmetto groves above me, and with a transparency, which, by making them appear to vibrate, gave an idea of the heat being almostvisible. At a little distance, some monkeys of the smallest size with long bushy tails were skipping about, and I saw the gaily-pinioned flamingoes flitting from branch to branch; but near me there was no sound, save the gurgling ripple on the beach—not even the hum of the smallest insect.
Far away to the vast circle of the horizon, stretched the ocean in profound calm. Its waters were of the lightest blue, and no spot or sail appeared upon their glassy and glowing surface.
Thirst now oppressed me, but I drank greedily of a pure, cool spring, that trickled down a chasm in the rocks, and then thought of looking about for the nearest habitation, I cared not whether it proved French or English; though I had some dread of falling among the revolted slaves of either nation, or the wild Caribs, the aborigines of the Indian isles.
I found myself in a kind of creek, from which there was no way of egress, but by climbing up the cliffs inland, as the rocks descended sheer into the water, like ramparts of basalt; so grasping the mangroves, the wild gourds, vines, and other luxuriant creepers which covered the face of the cliffs, I began to ascend from the shore.
I had scarcely attained an altitude of thirty yards or so, when I found my feet entangled in what I conceived to be the dried branches of a tree. After kicking vigorously, on looking down, imagine my sensations on finding that I had hurled from a shelf of the rock the bleached remains of a human skeleton!
This in no way cheerful episode, gave me fresh energy; and I soon gained the summit of the cliff, which was about a hundred and sixty feet high, and proved to be the most lofty eminence in the isle—for it was an isle on which I had been thrown.
Here I looked round, and must leave my friend the reader to conceive the horror that survey caused within me. On every side I beheld the girdling sea, but not a vestige of a human habitation. I was cast upon an island, about twelve miles in circumference, desert, lonely, and though fertile and densely wooded, uninhabited, save by the monkey and the tortoise! On this isle I soon discovered that I had one companion—a terrible one—despair!
Some time elapsed, ere I could realize this terrible conviction. Desperately I toiled through the dense furzy thickets, which were interwoven by tens of thousands of jungly creepers, in the hope that some human creature—some hermit, a shipwrecked wretch like myself—or lonely Carib might meet me; but after a fruitless search, wasted, worn, and hoarse with halloing, I returned to the summit of the cliff, once more to survey the sea, in the hope of beholding a sail. Hunger as yet I did not experience; the time for it was coming.
The noon of day arrived, and the heat and silence were alike oppressive. The fierce sun, hot, clear, and cloudless, was at its zenith: the blue of the sky, amid which it shone, was so deep, that the eye ached on surveying it, or seeking to penetrate its far and wondrous immensity, while from the still, calm, and waveless sea the smoky exhalations arose in columns like thin white haze. The heat was suffocating; to breathe it, was like inhaling the atmosphere of an open furnace. One marvelled that the fiery orb above failed to ignite the voiceless world below; and then there was a silence so solemn in the sea and sky! Everything was hushed, and amid the density of the primeval thickets, the leaves of which hung parched and still, there seemed to be not the smallest insect stirring. Around me there reigned that which a writer has styled, "The dead silence of mid-day, which is deeper and more solemn in tropical climes, than the deepest silence of night."
The whole day passed and evening found me still on the cliff, sweeping the horizon with anxious and aching, keen and haggard eyes; but not a sail appeared in sight.
I imagined that I must have been cast upon an islet somewhere between the Windward Islands and those of the Spanish Main; and such, ultimately proved to be the case; for this new scene of my adventures lay about 63° 40' west longitude, and 11° 40' north latitude, and is now known as the Isle of Tortoises; so that our unfortunate ship must have been driven at tremendous speed before the wind and waves.
Guadaloupe! oh, how I longed to be with my comrades now! I envied even the youngest drum-boy in the Fusiliers.
Ever before me were the familiar features of my friends, with those of poor Stanley, and other ill-fated men, who had perished in the ship. It seemed incredible that all this had passed in a night.
Evening came on. From the lonely cliff I still gazed upon the lonelier sea. The rays of the setting sun gave it the aspect of a mighty sheet of flame, palpitating, rippling, and reflecting every hue of the sky above.
And night was wondrous! The deep calm sea reflected the unnumbered stars so distinctly round the isle, that it seemed to float between two heavens—one above it, and the other below. The night was passed in restlessness and anxiety, or in dreams—uneasy visions; yet I know not that I slept. I had ample time for reflection now, on my own conduct at various times. I often prayed deeply and fervently; but with the knowledge that if I were once out of this confounded island, I would—I very much feared—be no better than before. Yet, it did not seem to me, that I had been a very bad sort of fellow after all.
I might live to be an old man, if food such as I could catch or glean lasted; but what a life would it be? The very thought was all but madness!
I might become ailing—seriously ill, and dying, lie unburied with my bones whitening for years ere some friendly hand interred them—if they were ever interred at all. Then I remembered the skeleton that lay below the cliff, and wondered what terrible tale of sorrow, suffering, or crime, it would reveal.
I had read of the bones of wrecked or marooned men being found, years after their death, upon the sandy banks and desert rocks of the Antilles. I had also read of white mummies being found on the African coast—the mummies of wrecked seamen, lying dry, shrivelled, and unburied on the hot sands, and as these recollections occurred to me, a gloomy horror of my situation settled over me, as each long and lonely night drew solemnly and drearily on.
I felt all the bitterness of ambition nipped in the bud, and of a future perhaps annihilated. This was not the lonely and miserable life, the lingering and awfully obscure death, I had portrayed to myself in moments of boyish enthusiasm.
The next day came, and I awoke to find that I had actually been asleep, and that day passed, as many were fated to pass, without a sail being seen..
I gathered dried drift wood and fallen branches in a pile on the summit of the cliff, to light therewith a signal fire in case a ship should appear, without reflecting that I was without the means of igniting the fuel; and on remembering this, I could have wept with disappointment.
Thirst I could quench at every spring; but the pangs of hunger now assailed me, and for a time death by starvation stared me in the face. I reasoned with myself, and after a time took heart to look once more about me. On examination I found plenty of shell-fish on the shore; plenty of land-crabs, fruit, yams, gourds, nuts; and thus, if by any means I could have lighted a fire to broil one or other, to dispel the dews of night, and be a seaward signal while it lasted, I should not have fared so ill.
Tidings of the loss of theEtnawould (I knew) ere long, reach my mother and the regiment. By the former I would long be mourned for as dead; in the other, my commission would be gifted away to another, on my being superseded; but these reflections were almost trifling when compared to others excited by my terrible predicament.
I had thirty guineas in my purse. I often surveyed them with a species of grim contempt. In that sequestered place, they were of less value than the wild vines that grew upon the rocks, the giant land-crabs or the brown tortoise that crawled upon the shore, and I would have given them all for a flint and steel.
On the southern side of the island, there was a large cavern, into which the sea rolled with a hollow sound; but its aspect was so gloomy, that I had not yet curiosity to penetrate its recesses. Moreover, I had conceived a horror—a hatred of this small spot of earth on which my evil fortune had cast me.
How solitary were my days! How deeply solemn—almost terrible, were my nights on that lonely isle! The rising and the setting of the sun and stars alone marked how time passed.
"Time, where man lives not—what is it but eternity?" and thereon no man dwelt save me. Means of escape I had none. There were no trees large enough to form a canoe; and if they had existed, I was without tools. Even with a well-equipped boat, what could I have done? In my total ignorance of the locality and of seamanship, I was safer on the island than on the sea; and these convictions deepened the weariness and despair that sunk at times upon me.
Every morning I watched the beams of the sun gilding the peak of a lofty rock, ere he rose from the sea; they stole down inch by inch, and foot by foot, as the god of day ascended into the sky, till the waves at its base glittered in light. At eve, these waves were the first that grew dark; then the light stole slowly upward, as the cold shade of night ascended like a rising tide, till the last farewell ray of the already set sun beamed on the sharp volcanic peak, and again the lonely isle "was left to darkness and to me."
Necessity compelled me to invent certain means for the sustenance of life, and for the preservation of health; for I was daily in hope of seeing some vessel appear, either bound for the Spanish Main, or for the Bay of Honduras. Seven days stole away, yet not a topsail had appeared above the horizon, and I was afraid almost to sleep, lest a vessel might pass in the night.
The heavy dews so productive of fever and ague were my chief dread. For the first three nights I slept under a ledge of impending rock. On the fourth day I had found the fragments of a boat upon the beach in a place where they were almost hidden by the sprouting mangroves. Of these fragments I constructed a kind of hut, by covering them with turf and plantain-leaves, and therein I burrowed cosily enough at night, and secured myself from insects, reptiles, and the devouring land-crabs.
Hither I dragged the topsail-yard, and, by repeatedly striking the mountings and sling, which were of iron, with a hard stone, I succeeded in producing sparks which ignited the dead, dry leaves, and occasionally made a fire whereon to broil a tortoise or roast a yam. A sharp stone served me for a knife when opening cocoanuts; the kernel was food—the milk was drink. I ate only to sustain nature, for my heart was heavy, and hope grew faint as day after day rolled on.
So strange is the effect of an overwrought imagination, that amid the awful solitude by which I was surrounded, I thrice imagined that I distinctly heard avoicecalling myname.
In troubled dreams, my mother's kind face and sweet smile came before me, and I heard the merry voice of Lotty, who used to sing as constantly as the blackbirds for whom she spread crumbs every morning on her window-sill; and then I awoke to find it but a vision, and that those who loved me were far, far away.
On a part of the beach which shelved abruptly down towards the sea, I found, half-buried among the rank luxuriance of the place, a rusty cannon of antique form—some relic, perhaps, of the buccaneers, as it seemed much more than a hundred years old, and bore upon its breech, in Spanish, "La Lima."
In another place I discovered a more solemn memorial of mankind—a grave, with the remains of a mahogany cross at its head. Who lay interred there? Had he, or she, been earthed up in their last home by the survivor whose bones were scattered on the cliff, which, perhaps, he was daily in the habit of climbing to gaze on the silent sea for a passing sail, even as I now daily climbed it, and gazed hopelessly? This solitary grave gave me food for many mournful reflections, and caused a hundred vague surmises. Its solitude seemed all the more awful in that voiceless isle of the Caribean Sea, and—I scarce know why—but I always shunned the place at night, lest I might see the dim outline of some ancient Spanish mariner, with peaked beard and slashed doublet, or of some grim buccaneer seated at the head of his own grave. Solitude and thought were fast making me timid and superstitious.
The dawn of day always filled me with new hope, but the fall of night with heart-broken wretchedness.
On a day of more than common beauty, I had grown weary of surveying the ever lonely sea, and descended from the cliff to the shore. As the sun went westward, the water assumed a deeper blue; the lower part of my island became almost black in its depth of greenness; but the summits of its rocks and tufted pines were tinted by a red glow exceeding any effect a mortal pencil could produce.
Wandering listlessly on, I reached the cavern which, as already mentioned, opened on the southern side of the isle. The cool shade of this vast recess allured me on this day to enter it. There was something solemn and majestic in its height and depth—its walls of rock, covered by luxuriant creepers, and its roof, a perfect but natural arch, encrusted with scoriae, blocks of quartz, and studded by crystals, the result of volcanic fires, while long stalactites, white as alabaster, hung from the basaltic ceiling like the crocketed pendants of a Gothic cathedral. A kind of natural path, formed by a ledge of rock, afforded easy access far into this cavern, and along this I proceeded.
The purity of the external atmosphere seemed to increase the wonderful depth to which I saw the bases of the rocks, the layers of coral and shells, the huge, slimy plants that waved their solemn and fan-like leaves a hundred feet below me; I could see the silver-scaled fishes that glanced and shot in and out of sight, while my own face and figure were reflected there as in a well—and a woeful aspect they presented, my tangled hair, my length of beard, my forehead, cheeks, and neck scorched to russet redness by the tropical sun.
Further within the cavern there was a strong and rank odour of mingled seaweed and rotten branches with the fungi that drooped from the rocks into the water.
To this retreat I often came to eat my dinner of broiled shell-fish and yams. Once, while reclined listlessly against the rocks, after my savage repast was over, and gazing vacantly into the calm depth of the water that rippled far away into the recesses of the cavern, suddenly a natural feature, which I had hitherto conceived to be a mere mass of weedy rock, seemed to assume a new form.
The upper portion of it was only three or four feet below the water; but lay like an enormous boulder-stone, wedged between the walls of the cavern. I strained my eyes—could I be deceived? No—it was a ship—the hull of a large but shattered ship, lying with its stern towards me, slightly heeled over to port, and covered by a mass of seaweed that waved in long green slimy leaves and tangles on every ripple of the water!
Here was a startling discovery and episode in my lonely hermit life.
I tore down and drew aside some of the thick mangroves and creepers which fringed the mouth of the cavern, and admitted more of the broad blaze of the noonday sunlight. Then I could distinctly perceive the mouldered hull of a vessel of some five hundred tons; but of a strange and antique form. High-prowed and square-pooped, her stern and quarters bore still the remains of elaborate carving, though the greater portion of her starboard side and most of her timberheads, with all her gunnel, had disappeared, either by the shock of the waves, when she had been thrown by a tempest and the force of the sea into this strange place, or by the gradual process of decay; but her stern-post and six stern-windows were distinctly traceable. I could see the fish darting through them into the watery recesses of her mouldering cabins. I could see where one or two pieces of cannon, an anchor, and other heavy masses of ironwork, had sunk by their own weight to the bottom, through the soft and spongy wood, which, by the length of time it had lain in the water, was now reduced almost to a pulp.
This ship had evidently been lifted by some mighty wave into the chasm and bulged there, and now all that remained of her was covered by an entire coating of barnacles and seaweed.
A silent, voiceless, mouldering wreck is an object that excites melancholy thoughts at all times; but in the situation in which I was then placed, there was something also exciting and solemnizing in the discovery; and for a time I forgot even to look for a passing ship in the new and strange interest this old and weedy hull of antique form roused within me.
I remembered the brass cannon which was lying on the shore inscribedLa Lima, and one or two guns that could be seen lying on the layers of shells beside the wreck, were exactly of the same form and size.
"La Lima?" I pondered; this was no doubt the name of the ship, and, as if to corroborate my ideas, she was evidently built in the old Spanish fashion, with those elaborate carvings on her poop and quarters, which survived even the times of Trafalgar and Cape St. Vincent.
I came hither day after day to gaze on this new object—new at least to me; till its gaping stern-windows became like the features of an old friend, and I loved to fancy the story of the wreck—to people her deck and cabins with the life which had once been instinct there; the Spaniards, with their slashed doublets, their mantles, ruffs, and rapiers, their long and solemn Don-Quixote-like visages; and then the fury of the storm, amid which they and their ship had perished—all perchance save thetwo—one whose grave I had seen, and the other whose bones I had so inadvertently scattered.
On the adjacent ledges of rock were several rings, bolts, and shapeless pieces of iron, from which the wood had long since decayed, and which were mere masses of rust. Among these I found a circular plate of brass, or some base metal, which had evidently covered the tompion of a cannon. The substance of which it was composed had resisted the process of decay, and a thick coat of verdigris encrusted it. On removing this, I discovered letters and a date; and by a little industry traced—
"LA LIMA, 1647."
"Sixteen hundred and forty seven!" I exclaimed, while memory came to my aid.
In an old book, over which I had often pored when at home in my mother's cottage—a book which was given to me by little Amy Lee, and entitled "The Buccaneers of America"*—I remembered to have read of a great ship of Lima, which bore the name of that wealthy province of Peru. She had on board a vast treasure, subscribed by the merchants of Mexico and Panama, for the use and service of the unfortunate King Charles I., then at the close of his futile struggle with Cromwell and the Scots.
* "The Buccaneers of America, written by Mr. Basil Ringrose, Gent., and printed for William Crooke, at the Green Dragon, without Temple Bar, 1684."
This stately caravel was said to have been mounted with seventy great and small brass guns, and to have had in treasure thirty millions of dollars, or pieces of eight; but after leaving the coast of Peru for England was never heard of again. One rumour said that she had been last seen, in the bay of Manta, twenty miles south from the equator; another that she had foundered on Los Ahorcados, two solitary rocks which lie a few leagues from the shore of the Spanish Main. At all events, she perished when King Charles was a captive in the castle of Carisbrooke, and the gold she contained never reached him, or the cavaliers who stood by his fallen fortunes.
Strange emotions of mingled joy and mortification filled my mind, on conceiving that I had made this valuable discovery—joy, that a vast treasure, such as that which filled the hold of this old shattered ship, lay there in secret and only known to me; and mortification, that if I perished on this most desolate isle, my bones might lie unseen and unknown for as many years as she had done.
If she was—as I doubted not—theLimaof the buccaneer history, of what avail to me were all the millions of dollars she contained, or which were strewed at the bottom of the cave wherein she lay? Twenty times that sum, had it been mine, I would have given freely, joyfully, to be away from the place of my involuntary captivity, on board the smallest craft that ever sailed the sea.
In the miserable little wigwam—the veritable rabbit-burrow, which I had constructed, I lay for hours that night, thinking of the wreck of the great Spanish galleon, and picturing the great iron-bound boxes of treasure that were lying among the weedy ruins of her gaping timbers—treasure existing there perhaps for me alone; and then I smiled mournfully, and almost with surprise at myself, and disgust, to find how, with hope, the demon of acquisitiveness began to fill my heart with the glow of avarice; and even while thus smiling I resolved, with dawn, to visit the scene of my long-hidden treasure.
During the whole of the next day I toiled to form a species of hook, from the iron sling of the topsail-yard, with which I had been washed ashore—using a long flinty stone as a hammer, and another as an anvil. Then I conveyed this impromptu engine (which I had lashed with a tough creeper to the yard arm) along the shore towards the cavern, where I intended to use it as a drag and lever.
On this evening, as if an adventure was about to be achieved, I was struck (I know not why) by the wild, rugged, and beautiful aspect of this lonely island.
About the cavern-mouth, the foreground of the view was a rocky beach, on which the waves of the Caribean sea were dashing in white foam, for the trade-wind blew freshly from the east. Outside, the breakers had that greenish-brown tint, peculiar to the sea when near shoal water that is full of tropical weeds. Beyond, rose lofty crags and rugged precipices, crowned by palm-trees, and cleft here and there into deep passes and fissures.
The time was evening now; the sun had gone down into the waste of waters, but had left behind the splendid tints of a windy sunset still playing upon the ever-changing masses of torn vapour that hovered about the quarter of his declension. On the other hand, the moon, (to use the language of Ossian) "full as the round-orbed shield of the Mighty," was rising, but obscured in masses of dark and opaque cloud, behind which her cold white lustre was spread over the sky, and glittered in sheets of silver on the rippling sea below.
It was amid a strange and wild, though not uupleasing combination of light and shade, sea and shore, moonrise and sunset, that I sought the weird cavern where the old weedy caravel lay; yet I felt something impelling me on—a craving after activity and excitement—though I had a horror of the loneliness around me. All my strength was required in handling the topsail-yard, with which I made three or four vigorous thrusts at the side of the ancient ship and tore away one or two pieces of mouldered plank, covered with shells and barnacles. At every stroke the plash of the water echoed mournfully.
I was in the act of pausing a moment to recover breath, when a loud voice close by me exclaimed,—
"Yoho, brother—avast heaving?"
"A voice—a voice here—in this hitherto silent solitude!" was the question on my lips and in my heart.
Paralysed by actual terror, I remained as if rooted to the spot, like Robinson Crusoe when he first saw the human footprint in the sand of his island. Then a chilly horror—a dread of witnessing something supernatural in the cold twilight of that vast ocean cavern, made the blood curdle in my heart, for I was too much of a Scotchman to withstand the force of such weird ideas.
I turned slowly in the direction from which the voice had issued; but instead of beholding the ghastly spectre of an ancient Spanish mariner, with a peaked beard terminating his sombre visage, a steeple-crowned hat and long toledo—the squat outline of a bulbous-shapen fiend in voluminous trunk hose, or the grislier spirit of a murdered captive, watching over the treasure, the tomb of which I was now violating—instead, I say, of any of these, I encountered only the extremely matter-of-fact face and sturdy form of a well-whiskered, brown-visaged British sailor, clad in a tarpaulin sou-wester, blue checked shirt, and pair of tarry trousers; and who, strangely enough, was tied by the hands and heels to the stump of a decayed tree, on which, as I afterwards found, he had been asleep, when, full of my own thoughts and purposes, I passed close by him.
"Avast heaving!" he repeated; "come, look sharp, whoever you are, and cut and cast off these infernal lashings, for I am as stiff as if I had been here these three hundred years."
The voice grew familiar to me, and on coming close to him, I recognized an old—but certainly not much valued—acquaintance.
"Dick Knuckleduster!" I exclaimed.
"You know me—come! that's devilish odd," he bellowed out. "A red-coat—a soldier too. What! d—n my precious eyes, is it you, Captain Ellis—or what are you?" he added with a scowl in his eye and a growl in his tone. "Now in the name of the living jingo, how cameyouhere?"
"A coincidence fortunate enough for you, I think," said I, and my own voice, so long unused, sounded strangely in my ears. "How cameyouhere?"
"Do you see that craft in the clear offing, bearing away north and by east?"
"A ship!" I exclaimed.
"Ay, a ship," he added, gnashing his teeth; "and may she never lift tack or sheet till she and all her crew are moored in the jaws of hell!"
On looking round, I saw plainly enough a large brig bout twelve miles distant, bearing off under a full spread of canvas, that shone white as snow in the full splendour of the risen moon, which contested for precedence with the fading light of sunset on the sea.
"She is a privateer, theGeorge Third, of Bristol, carrying sixteen 12-pounders and three hundred men. Men do I call them? d—n them for a gang of lubberly cowards to let their grogswilling tyrant of a captain maroon a poor devil here as he did me; and tied to a post too, without a chance for life."
"For what did he do this?"
"Mutiny—or madness he called it."
"When did this happen?"
"This very morning."
"Heavens!" I exclaimed, stung with disappointment.
"Well, I would rather shout on the other place," said he; "but what is the matter with you?"
"Oh, Heavens," I continued, without heeding him, "that this ship—this means of escape and life should be so near and I ignorant of it!"
"By the captain's orders (here he uttered another tremendous malediction) I was landed, lashed to that elegant stump, and left, as you saw me, just six hours ago; but cut the rope if you have an atom of human charity about you, my jolly land-crab, for my hands and arms are swollen nigh to bursting, like the skin of a Jack Spaniard's borrachio."
"It is all very well to say cut, but where shall I find a knife?"
"At the lanyard—the rope-yarn round my neck."
With his clasped knife I set free this ruffian, whose presence, in sooth to say, I hailed at first with satisfaction, and whose voice was most welcome to my ear; for to this pass had a longing for fellowship brought me.
"And you, messmate?" he asked gruffly.
"Our ship, theEtnaprize, was wrecked here. Driven ashore with this spar, I have been living a hermit's life, like Robinson Crusoe, for I scarcely know how many long and dreary days and nights."
"Give me your fin—thunder and blazes! Oh, for a drop of old Tom or right Jamaica to splice the mainbrace with? What have you in your locker?"
"My locker?"
"Yes; you know what I mean."
"Cold water that gurgles from the rock, drunk out of your hand or a vine-leaf."
"Bah! Father Adam's scuttle-butt would never do for me; but may I go to sea with a parson's warrant, if we don't find something better than that here."
"How? I should be glad to find something stronger."
"There must be some toddy-trees on this island. I'm cold as an iceberg in Baffin's Bay; but how'soever, I can, blow a cloud of 'bacca."
Revolting as the companionship of this wretch proved, in some respects I was thankful, truly thankful for it in my solitude, and almost forgot the revelations of crime I had overheard when with him in the Sandridge beacon.
"Now, what have you got to eat here?" he asked.
"Yams, cocoanuts, tortoises, and shell-fish."
"What! not a devilled drumstick, peppered and done to a turn—a grilled kidney—cold fowl and sliced ham? No jolly salt junk, so hard and pickled that it might polish like Honduras mahogany? Excuse me, mister—never mind, you're no officer here, you know, so we shall get on as merrily as two Chatham Jews on a pay-day. I was once shipwrecked among the tattooed devils in the Marquesas islands, when on a voyage in the Southern Pacific. A regular Irish hurricane capsized the ship, and down she went to old Davy with all hands on board—all, at least, save myself and five others, who got ashore in the jolly-boat. Men eat their wives in the Marquesas occasionally; it is a matrimonial privilege, and rather economical. I lived with a fellow who more than once offered me a broiled rasher off his squaw, and very well it smelt, I can tell you, when broiled at the end of an old boat-hook, well seasoned with pimento, and spread, sandwich fashion, on a slice of the bread-fruit."
Knuckleduster concluded his reminiscence by a torrent of forcible invectives on the captain who had marooned him.
We rambled along the shore in the moonlight, and though I suggested that two persons could afford each other considerable support, situated as we were, and might achieve an escape from the island, whichonewould find futile and fatal, he lessened my hopes of relief by assuring me that the Isle of Tortoises lay far out in the Caribean Sea, and quite beyond the usual track of vessels bound either for the Bay of Honduras or the Gulf of Venezuela; and so we might remain there till our heads were white as winter frost, or the bursting tufts on the cotton-tree, without being discovered or relieved. But this fate seemed so horrible, that I could not realize a conviction of its possibility.
My new companion soon discovered a species of toddy-tree, the distilled gum of which made him partially intoxicated, and for many days afterwards he almost lived at the root of it, sucking the twigs, or with his lips applied to the bark, till he sank on the ground like a gorged leech. Under the influence of this new liquor, he frequently sung, shouted to imaginary ships, crouched and shrieked in the grasp of fancied phantoms and tormentors, danced hornpipes on the beach, swore fearfully, and interlarded his conversation, and more particularly his ravings, with recollections of past days of crime, and always ended by an astounding malediction on the crew who had marooned him.
The solitude of my island had thoroughly departed now.