"Here Captain Wallis got up again, walking across the cabin, seemingly much moved. 'Well, after that I slept with the dinner-knife in my breast, till the jailer took it away; for I thought at the time that poor Wright had been murdered, though I found cause to change my mind when I knew what loneliness does with a man, not to speak of the notion being put before him to take his own life. For a while, too, Captain Shaw was in the same cell; by which time we had such bad food, and so little of it, that one day when a pigeon lighted on the window, which used to come there for a crumb or two every afternoon, right along with the gold gleam of the sun as it shot over the dark houses to that window, I jumped up and caught it. Shaw and I actually tore it in bits, and ate it raw on the spot; though 'twas long ere I could get rid of the notion of the poor bird fluttering and cooing against the bars, and looking at me with its round little soft eye as it pecked off the slab. But what was that to the thought of my old father that had hurt himself to keep me in the navy, and me able now to make his last days comfortable? or the innocent young girl I had married the moment I got my commission of first lieutenant, expecting to be flush of prize-money? It even came into my head often, when I sat by myself in the cell they afterwards put me into, alone, how that little blue pigeon might have carried a letter to England for me; at any rate it was the only thing like a chance, or a friend, I ever saw the whole time I was there; and foolish as the notion may look, why the window was too high in a smooth wall for me once to reach it.
"'I heard all Paris humming round the thick of the stone every day, and sometimes the sound of thousands of soldiers tramping past below, over the next bridge, with music and such like—no doubt when the First Consul, as they called him, went off to some campaign or other: then I'd dream I felt the deck under me in a fresh breeze at night, till the soul sickened in me to wake up and find the stones as still as before, and now and then hear the sentries challenging on their rounds.
"'Well, one day, a fellow in a cloak, with a slouch hat over his forehead, was let in to try, as I thought, if therewas anything to be got out of me, as they tried two or three times at first; some spy he was, belonging to that police devil Fouché. What did he offer me, d'ye think, after beating about the bush for half-an-hour, but the command of a French seventy-four under the Emperor, as he was by that time, and, if I would take it, I was free! On this I pretended to be thinking of it, when the police fellow sidled near me, to show a commission signed with the Emperor's name at the foot.
"'In place of taking hold of it, however, I jumped up and seized the villain's nose and chin before he saw my purpose, stuffed the parchment into his mouth by way of a gag, and made him dance round the cell, with his cloak over his head and his sword dangling alongside of him, to keep his stern clear of my foot; till the turnkey heard the noise, and he made bolt out as soon as the door was opened. You'd wonder how long that small matter served me to laugh over, for my spirit wasn't broken yet, you see; but even then, in the very midst of it, I would all of a sudden turn sick at heart, and sit wondering when the exchange of prisoners would be made that I looked for. The worst of it was, at times a horrid notion would come into my head of the French seventy-four being at sea at the moment, and me almost wishing they'd give me the offer over again—I fancied I felt the very creak of her straining in the trough of a sea, and saw the canvas of her topsails over me, standing on her poop with a glass in my hand, till she rose on a crest, and there were theAgamemnon'slighted ports bearing down to leeward upon us, till I heard Nelson's terrible voice sing out, "Give it to 'em, my lads!" when the flash of her broadside showed me his white face under the cocked hat, and it came whizzing over like a thirty-two-pound shot right into my breast, as I sunk to the bottom, and found myself awake in the prison.
"'I don't know how long it was after, but they moved me to another berth, where a man had shot himself through the head, for we actually met his body being carried along the passage; and more than that, sir, they hadn't taken the trouble to wash his brains off the wall they were scattered on. There I sat one day after another, watching the spot marked by them turn dry, guessing at everything that had gone through them as long as he was alive in the place, tillmy own got perfectly stupid; I was as helpless as a child, and used to cry at other times when the jailer didn't bring me my food in time. I fancied they'd forget all about me in England; and as for time, I never counted it, except by the notion I had been two or three years in.
"'At last the turnkey got so used to me, thinking me no doubt such a harmless sort of a poor man, that he would sit by and talk to me, giving accounts of the Emperor's battles and victories, and such matters. I must say I began to feel as if he was some sort of a god upon earth there was no use to strive against, just as the turnkey seemed to do, more especially when I heard of Nelson's death; so when he told me one time it wouldn't do for Fouché or the Emperor to let me out yet, I said nothing more. "Will the Emperor not let me outnow?" asked I, a long time after. "Diable!" said the man, "do you think His Majesty has time to think of such a poor fellow as you, among such great matters? No, no,pauvr' homme!" continued he; "you're comfortable here, and wouldn't know what to do if you were out! No fear of your doing as your CapitaineOuritedid, since you've lived here so long, monsieur." "How long is it now, good Pierre?" asked I, with a sigh, as he was going out at the door; and the turnkey counted on his fingers. "Ulm—Austerlitz—Jena," said he slowly; "oui, oui—I scarcely thought it so much—it wants only six or seven months of ten years!" and he shut-to the door. I sprang up off the bed I was sitting on, wild at the thought—I may say, for a day or two I was mad—ten years! ten years!—and all this time where was my poor innocent Mary, and the child she expected to bear when I left Exeter—where was my old father? But I couldn't bear to dwell on it. Yes, Aldridge, by the God above, they had kept me actuallyten yearsthere, in that cursed Temple whilehewas going on all the time with his victories, and his shows, and his high-flown bulletins! Yet he wasn't too high, it seems, to stoop to give out, through his tools, how Wright and I had both killed ourselves for fear of bringing in the British Government—not to offer me a seventy-four in a dungeon—me, a man used to wind and water, that loved a breeze at sea like life. 'Twas the very devil's temptation, sir; but I'll tell you what, both Captain Wright and myself had been with Sir Sidney Smith at Acre, whenhewas baffled for the first time in his days—thatwas the thing, I believe from my soul, that he hated us for.Ihad a right to be exchanged ten times over, though he might have called Wright a spy; but what was my poor wife and her new-born baby, or my old father's gray hairs tohim, and his great ambition to make everything his own—and when the very thought of me in my hole at the Temple would strike him in the midst of his victories, where he hadn't time, forsooth, to trouble himself about a poor man like me. The fact was, I could tell how he offered a British seaman, that had had a finger in nettling him, the command of one of his seventy-fours, which he had nobody fit to manage—and that in a prison where I'd be glad even of fresh air.
"''Twas then, in fact, the purpose rose firmer and firmer in me, out of the fury that was like to drive me mad, how I'd get out of his clutches, and spend my life against the very pitch of his power I knew so well about. Till that time I used to look through the bars of the window at the Seine, without ever fancying escape, low down as it was, compared with my last cell. There was a mark in the stone floor with my walking back and forward since they put me in; and by this time I had the cunning of a beast, let alone its strength, in regard of anything I took into my head; often I used to think I saw the end of my finger, or the corner of a stone, more like the way a fly sees them, than a man. The turnkey, Pierre, would never let me have a knife to eat my food with, lest I should do as he said all we English were apt to do—kill myself—which, by-the-way, is a lie; and I think that fiend of an Emperor yonder must have taught them to blame us with their own crime. However, latterly he let me have a fork for half-an-hour at dinner; and for a quarter of an hour every day, except those when he stayed to talk to me as I ate it, did I climb up and work with that fork at the top and bottom of one of the window-bars, taking care not to break the fork, and jumping down always in time to finish the meal. It took me four whole months, sir, to loosen them! Such deadly fear as I was in, too, lest he'd find it out, or lest they moved me to another cell—you'd have thought I was fond of the walls round the place, where hundreds of men before me had scrawled their last words; and the one that shot himself had written, "Liberté—anéantissement!"Liberty—annihilation!" just over where thespatter of his brains had stuck when he laid his head to the spot! If Pierre had noticed what I'd been about, my mind was made up to kill him, and then make the trial before they missed him; butthatI had a horror of, after all, seeing the man had taken a sort of liking to me, and I knew he had a wife.
"'Well, at last, one day I had the thing finished; when midnight came I trembled like a leaf, till I began to fear I couldn't carry it through. I tore my shirt and the blanket in strips, to twist into a line, got out the bar by main force, squeezed through, and let myself down. The line was just long enough to let me swing against the cold wall, over a sentry's head going round the parapet below; as soon as he was past, I dropped on the edge of the wall, and fell along it, my fingers scraping the smooth stone to no purpose, till I was sliding off into the dark, with the river I didn't know how far below me, though I heard it lapping against some boats at the other side.
"'For a few moments I was quite senseless from the fall into the water. The splash roused the sentinels, and three or four bullets whizzed into it about me, as I struck out for the shore. Still the night was thick enough to help me clear off among the dark lanes in the city; and the upshot of it was that I found out some royalists, who supplied me with a pedlar's dress; till, in the end, after I can't tell you how many ticklish chances, where my luck hung upon a hair, I reached the coast, and was taken off to a British frigate. At home, sir—at home, I found I'd been given up long ago for a dead man in Bonaparte's prisons, and—and—the old man had been buried seven years, Aldridge—but not so long as my—wife. The news of my taking my own life in the Temple saved her the rest—'twas too much for her at the time, Aldridge—both she and her little one had lain in the mould nine years, when I stood looking at the grass under Exeter Cathedral. I was a young man almost, still; but my hair was as grizzled when I got out of the Temple in 1813, as you see it now, and I'll never walk the deck fairly again. Aldridge,' added the captain of thePodargus, turning round and standing still, with a low sort of a deep whisper, ''tis a strange thing, the Almighty's way of working—but I never thought—in the Temple yonder, longing for a heave of the water under me—II little thought John Wallis would ever come to keep guard over his Majesty, the Emperor Napoleon!'
"When Captain Wallis stopped, the long send of the sea lifting the brig below us, with a wild, yearning kind of ripple from her bows back to her counter, and weltering away astern—one felt it, I may say, somewhat like an answer to him, for the breeze had begun to freshen: it had got all of a sudden nearly quite dark, too, as is the case inside the tropics, without the moon. 'Let's go on deck, gentlemen,' said the captain, coming to himself; 'now clap on those other topmost stu'nsails, Mr Aldridge, and make her walk, sir'—'No saying,' I heard him mutter, as he let us go up before him—'no saying what the want of thePodargusmight do, off the island, these dark nights—with water alongside, one can't be sure. I warrant me ifthat man'sdreams came true, as mine did, he would be at the head of his thousands again, ruining the whole world, with men rotting out of sight in dungeons while the wind blows! Ay, dreams, young gentleman!' said he to me as we stood on deck; 'I'll never get rid of that prison, in my head, nor the way that dead man's brain seemed to come into mine, off the wall! But for my part, off St Helena, 'tis Napoleon Bonaparte's dreams that enter into my head. If you'll believe it, sir, I'veheardthem as it were creeping and tingling round the black heights of the island at dead of night, like men in millions ready to break out in war-music, as I used to hear them go over the bridge near the Temple—or in shrieks and groans; we all the time forging slowly ahead, and the surf breaking in at the foot of the rocks. I know thenwho'sasleep at the time up in Longwood!'
"The brig-of-war was taking long sweeps and plunges before the wind; the Southern Cross right away on her larboard quarter, and the very same stars spread all out aloft, that I watched a couple of nights before, close by Violet Hyde. The whole of what I'd just heard was nothing to me in a single minute, matched with the notion of never seeing her more. Everything I'd thought of since we left England was gone, even one's heart for the service; and what to do now, I didn't know. I scarce noticed it commence to rain, till a bit of a squall had come on, and they were hauling down stu'nsails: the dark swells only to be seen rising with the foam on them, and a heavier cover of dull cloud risen off the brig'sbeam, as well as ahead; so that you merely saw her canvas lift before you against the thick of the sky, and dive into it again. 'Twas just cleared pretty bright off the stars astern of us, however, wind rather lighter than before the squall, when the captain thought he made out a sail near about the starboard beam, where the clouds came on the water-line; a minute or two after she was plain enough in the clear, though looming nearly end-on, so that one couldn't well know her rig. Thinking at first sight it might be the schooner, Captain Wallis was for bracing up, to stand in chase and overhaul her; but shortly after she seemed either to yaw a little, or fall off again before the wind like ourselves, at any rate showing three sticks on the horizon, with square canvas spread, and evidently a smallship.
"'Some homeward-bound craft meaning to touch at the island,' said Captain Wallis, telling the first lieutenant to keep all fast; by which time she was lost in the dusk again, and I wasn't long of going below. A fancy had got hold of me for the moment, I can't deny, of its being theSeringapatamafter us on Westwood's owning himself; whereupon I persuaded myself Captain Wallis might perhaps take the risk on him of letting us both go. For my part, I felt by this time as if I'd rather be in the same ship withher, hopeless though it was, than steer this way for the other side of the line; and I went down with a chill at my heart like the air about an iceberg.
"Not being asleep, however, a sudden stir on deck, an hour or two after that, brought me out of my cot, to look through the scuttle in the side. The brig had hauled her wind from aft on to her starboard quarter, making less way thanbeforeit, of course; I heard the captain's voice near the after-hatchway, too; so accordingly I slipped on my clothes, and went quietly up. ThePodarguswas running through the long broad swells usual thereabouts, with her head somewhere toward north-east; the officers all up, the whole of the crew in both watches clustered beyond the brig's fore-course, and the captain evidently roused, as well as impatient; though I couldn't at first make out the reason of her being off her course. As soon as she fell off a little, however, to my great horror I could see a light far ahead of us, right in the gloom of the clouds, which for a moment you'd have supposed wasthe moon rising red and bloody, till the heave of the sea betwixt us and it showed how both of us were dipping: and now and then it gave a flaring glimmer fair out from the breast of the fog-bank, while the breeze was sending a brown puff of smoke from it now and then to leeward against the clouds; through which you made a spar or two licking up the flame, and a rag of canvas fluttering across on the yard.
"Twas neither more nor less than a ship on fire—no doubt the vessel seen abeam of us that evening—a sight at which Captain Wallis seemingly forgot his hurry to make St Helena, in the eagerness shown by all aboard to save the poor fellows. Suddenly there was another wild gleam from the burning craft, and we thought it was over altogether, when up shot a wreath of fire and smoke again, then a fierce flash with a blue burst of flame, full of sparks, and all sorts of black spots and broken things, as if she had blown up while she heaved the last time on the swell. Everything was pitch dark next minute in her place, as if a big blot of ink had come instead; the brig-of-war herself rolling with a flap of her headsails up against the long heavy bank of cloud that blocked the horizon. 'Keep her away, sirrah!' shouted Captain Wallis, and thePodargussurged ahead as before, all of us standing too breathless to speak, but counting the heads of the waves as they flickered past her weather-beam. 'God's sake!' exclaimed the captain at last, 'this is terrible, Aldridge. If I had only overhauled her, as I meant at first, we might have helped them in time; for no doubt the fire must have been commenced when we noticed her yawing yonder a couple of hours ago, sir.' 'I think not, sir,' said his lieutenant; 'wewere against the clear; and if they'd been in dangerthen, she'd have fired a distress-gun. There couldn't have been much powder aboard, sir—more likely rum, I think!'
'For Heaven's sake!' continued the captain, 'let's look about—she must surely have had boats out, or something, Mr Aldridge! The best thing we can do is to fire a few times as we bear down—see that bow-gun cleared away, Mr Moore, and do it!'
"We might have been about a mile, as was guessed, from where she was last seen, when the brig fired a gun to windward, still standing on under everything. At the second flash that lighted up the belly of the clouds, with the black glitterof the swells below them, I fancied I caught a moment's glimpse of something two or three miles away. It was too short to say, however; and soon after the twinkle of a light, seemingly hoisted on a spar, was seen little more than half-a-mile upon the brig's lee-bow, dipping and going out of sight at times, but plain enough when it rose. Down went thePodargusfor the spot, sending the foam off her cutwater; and it was no long time before a wild hail from several voices could be made out almost close aboard. Ten minutes after she was brought to the wind, heaving a rope to the men on a loose raft of casks and spars, as it pitched alongside of her, with the sail hauled down on a spar they had stuck up, and a lantern at the head of it; after which the raft was cast off, and the poor fellows were safe on board.
"Two of them seemed to be half-drowned, the one wrapped up in a wet pilot-coat, his face looking white and frightened enough by the glimmer of the lanterns: the other darker a good deal, so far as I could make him out for the crowd about him, and he didn't seem able to speak; accordingly both of them were taken at once below to the surgeon. The rest were four half-naked blacks, and a little chap with earrings and a seaman's dress who was the spokesman on the quarter-deck to the captain's questions—plainly American by his snuffling sort of drawl.
"'Are there no more of you afloat?' was the first thing asked, to which the Yankee sailor shook his head. She was an American bark, he said, from a voyage of discovery round the two Capes; and he was mate himself, and the skipper, being addicted to his cups, had set a cask of rum on fire; so finding they couldn't get it under besides being wearied at the pumps, on account of an old leak, the men broke into the spirit-room, and got dead drunk. He and the blacks had patched up a raft in a hurry for bare life, barely saving the passenger and his servant who had jumped overboard; the passenger was a learned sort of a man, and his servant was a Mexican. Most of this I found next day, from the gun-room officers; however, I heard the mate of the burnt barque inquire of the captain whereabouts they were, as the skipper was the only man who could use a chronometer or quadrant, and the last gale had driven them out of their reckonings a long way. 'Somewhere south of the Line, I guess?' said he; but, onbeing told, the fellow gave a bewildered glance round him, seemingly, and a cunning kind of squint after it, as I fancied. 'Well,' said he, 'I guess we're considerable unlucky; but I consider to turn in, if agreeable!' The man had a way, in fact, half free-and-easy, half awkward that struck me; especially when he said, as he went below, he supposed 'this was a war-brig,' and hoped there 'wasn't war between the States and the old country?' 'No, my man,' said the captain, 'you may set your mind at ease on that point; but I'm afraid, nevertheless, we'll have to land you at St Helena!'
"'What, mister?' said the American, starting, 'that's where you've got Boneyparty locked up? Well now, if you give me a good berth for a few, mister, I guess I'll rayther ship aboard you, till I get a better! What's your wage just now, if I may ask, captain?' 'Well, well,' said the captain, laughing, 'we'll see to-morrow, my man!'—and the American went below. 'Set stu'nsails again, Mr Aldridge,' continued Captain Wallis, 'and square yards. Why, rather than have such a fellow in the ship's company, Aldridge, I'd land him without Sir Hudson's leave!'
"For my own part, next day, I should have given more notice to our new shipmates while the brig steered fair before the wind—the blacks and the mate leaning about her forecastle, and the other two being expected by the surgeon to come pretty well round before night, though the captain had gone to see them below; but a thing turned up all at once that threw me once more full into the thought of Violet Hyde, till I was perfectly beside myself with the helpless case I was in. The note Tom Westwood had shown me was still in the pocket of my griffin's coat, though I hadn't observed it till now; and what did I feel at finding out, that, instead of one from her to Westwood, it was a few words from my own sister, little Jane, saying in a pretty, bashful sort of way, that her brother Ned must come home before she could engage to anything! You may fancy how I cursed myself for being so blind; but a fellow never thinks his own sister charming at all—and what else could I have done at any rate? All I hoped for, was to get aboard of some Indiaman at St Helena, and there was nothing else I wearied to see the island again for. I may say I walked the brig's lee quarter-deck till daybreak; but anyhow the look-out from the foreyard had scarce sung out 'StHelena on the weather-bow!' when I was up, making out the round blue cloud in the midst of the horizon, with a white streak across it, like a bird afloat in the hazy blue, with the clear gleam from eastward off our starboard quarter running round to it.
"As soon as you near St Helena by a few miles, the trade-wind falls light, and making the rock, as you do from the South Atlantic, a good deal to leeward of the harbour, 'twould be pretty slow work beating round to north-east, but for the breeze always coming off the height, with the help of which one can coast easy enough along. Captain Wallis said no more than to bid the first lieutenant make the brig's number at her mast-head, while she still bore in direct upon the breast of the land, as much out of soundings as the day before; the smooth heavy swell seeming to float the island up in one huge lump ahead of us, till you saw it rolling into the very foot, with a line of surf, as if it all rose sheer out of the bottom of the sea; as grim and hard as a block of iron, too, and a good deal the same colour. By noon it hung fairly, as it were, over our mast-heads, the brig looking by comparison as tiny and as ticklish as a craft made of glass, she coasting away round, with yards braced first one way then another, and opening point after point from three hundred to two thousand feet high; while at times she would go stealing in with a faint ripple at her bows, near enough to hear the deep sound of the sea plunging slowly to the face of the rock, where the surf rose white against it without a break.
"There wasn't so much as a weed to be seen, the rocks getting redder and more coppery, sending out the light like metal, till you'd have thought they tingled all over with the heat. Then as you opened another bulge in the line, the sharp sugar-loaf hills, far away up, with the ragged cliffs and crags, shot over against the bare white sky in all sort of shapes; and after a good long spell of the sea, there was little fancy needed to give one the notion that they were changing into these, as we passed ahead, to mock you. There was onepeak for all the world like the top of St Paul's, and no end of church spires and steeples, all lengths and ways; then big bells and trumpets, mixed with wild beasts' heads, grinning at each other across some split in the blue beyond, and soldiers' helmets—not to speak of one huge block, like a nigger's face with a cowl behind it, hanging far out over the water. Save for the colour of it all, in fact, St Helena reminds one more of a tremendous iceberg than an island, and not the less that it looks ready in some parts to topple over and show a new face; while the sea working round it, surging into the hollows below water-mark, and making the air groan inside of them, keeps up a noise the like of which you wouldn't wish to cruise alongside of every day. The strangest thing about it, however, was that now and then, as you came abreast of some deep gully running up inland, a sudden blast of wind would rush out of it, sufficient to make thePodargusreel—with a savage thundering roar, too, like the howl out of a lion's mouth; while you looked far up a narrow, bare, black glen, closing into a hubbub of red rocks, or losing itself up a grey hillside in a white thread of a water-course; then the rough shell of the island shut in again, as still as before, save the light breeze and the deep hum of the surf along its foot. Curiously enough in a latitude like St Helena's, the island seems, as it were, a perfect bag of air. What with the heat of the rock, its hollow inside, the high peaks of it catching the clouds, and the narrow outlets it has, 'tis always brewing wind, you may say, to ventilate that part of the tropics—just as one may keep up cold draughts through and through a wet heap of loose stones, no matter how hot the weather is, as long as he pleases. As for a landing-place, though, there wasn't one of the gullies that didn't yawn over without falling to the sea; and, not to mention the surf underneath, where the dark swell came in unbroken from deep water without a shoal to soften it, why, watching it from the brig's side, I shouldn't have said a cat could scramble up or down the steep slopes and the wreck of stones, from the water's edge to the jaws of the easiest gully you saw.
"Once or twice, standing farther off, we caught sight of Diana's Peak over the shoulder of a hill, with the light haze melting about it; at last you noticed a large gun mounted against the sky on a lofty peak, where it looked like a hugetelescope; and on clearing another headland, a beautiful frigate came in between us and the burst of light to seaward, cruising to windward under easy sail. She bore up and stood towards the brig-of-war, just as the line of wall was to be seen winding round the middle of Sugarloaf Point, where the sentry's bayonet glittered near his watch-box, and the soldiers' red coats could be seen moving through the covered passage to the batteries. Five minutes after, thePodargusswept round the breast of Rupert's Hill into the bay, in sight of Jamestown and the ships lying off the harbour; clewing up her sails and ready to drop anchor, as the frigate hove to not far astern.
"You can fancy land heaving in sight after thrice as many weeks as you've been at sea, ladies; or the view of a ship to a man that's been long laid up in bed ashore; or a gulp of fresh water in a sandy desert—but I question if any of them matches your first glimpse of Jamestown from the roadstead, like a bright piece of fairy-work in the mouth of the narrow brown valley, after seeing desolation enough to make you wish for a clear horizon again. More especially this time, when all the while one couldn't help bringing to mind one's notion of the French Emperor, how, not long ago, the sight of the French coast, or a strange frigate over the Channel swell, used to make us think of him far ashore, with half the earth for his own, and millions of soldiers. We reefers down in the cockpit would save our grog to drink confusion to Napoleon, and in a rough night near a lee-shore, it was look alive aloft, or choose betwixt cold brine and the clutch of a gendarme hauling you to land. I do believe we looked upon him as a sort of god, as Captain Wallis did in the Temple; every ship or gunboat we saw taken, or had a hand in the mauling of, why, 'twas for the sheer sake of the thing, and scarce by way of harm to Boney; while nothing like danger, from breakers on the lee-bow to a November gale, but had seemingly a taste of him. None of us any more thought of bringing him to this, than we did of his marching into London, or of a French frigate being able to rake our oldPandorain a set-to on green water or blue, with us to handle her.
"Buttherewas the neat little cluster of houses, white, yellow, and green, spreading down close together in the bottom of the valley, and out along the sea's edge; the roughbrown cliffs sloping up on each side, with the ladder-like way to the fort on the right, mounting, as it were, out of the very street, to the flagstaff on the top, and dotted with red-coats going up and down; a bright line of a pier and a wall before the whole, the Government House dazzling through a row of spreading trees, and a little square church-tower to be seen beyond. 'Twas more like a scene in a play, than aught else; what with the suddenness of it all, the tiny look of it betwixt the huge rocks, the greenness of the trees and bushes, and patches of garden struggling up as far as they could go into the stone, and the gay little toys of cottages, with scarce flat enough to stand upon; save for the blue swell of the sea plunging lazily in through the bit of a bay, and the streak of air behind, that let you in high over the head of the hollow, up above one height and another, to a flat-headed blue rise in the distance, where Longwood could be seen from the maincross-trees I had gone to as the sails were furled.
"The sunlight, striking from both the red sides of the ravine, made the little village of a place, trees and all, glitter in a lump together, out of it, like no spot in the rest of the world; while elsewhere there wasn't so much as a weed to be seen hanging from the rock, nor the sign of another human habitation, saving the bare batteries on each hand, with a few sheds and warehouses over the beach along the landing-place. Once or twice the same sudden gust as before would come slap down through the valley into the brig's bare rigging, hot as the air was, with a howling kind of a sigh you took some time to get accustomed to, lest there was a hurricane to follow: in fact, one didn't well know whether it was the wild look of it outside, or the lovely spot in its grim mouth of a landing-place, but the whole island gave you the notion of a thing you couldn't be long sure of, without fancying it would give a shake some day or other again; or else spout fire, as no doubt it had done before, if there wasn't more fear of Napoleon getting back somehow to France, and wreaking bloody vengeance on the kings that shut him up in St Helena.
"There was apparently a busy scene ashore, however, both in the little town, which has scarce more than a single street, and along the quay, full of residents, as well as passengers from two Indiamen lying in-shore of us, while the Governmentesplanade seemed to be crowded with ladies, listening to the regimental band under the trees. TheNewcastlefrigate, with Sir Dudley Aldcombe's flag hoisted at her mizzen, was at anchor out abreast at Ladder Hill; and our first lieutenant had scarce pulled aboard of theHebe, which was hove-to off the brig's quarter, before I noticed the Admiral's barge lying alongside theHebe.
"Seeing Mr Aldridge on his way back shortly after, I came down the rigging, more anxious than ever to have my own matter settled; indeed, Captain Wallis no sooner caught sight of my face, uncomfortable as I daresay it looked, than he told me he was going to wait on the Admiral aboard theHebe, and would take me with him at once, if I chose. For my part, I needed nothing but the leave, and in ten minutes' time I found myself, no small mark of curiosity, betwixt the waist and the quarter-deck of theHebe, where the officers eyed me with as little appearance of rudeness as they could help, and I overhauled the spars and rigging aloft as coolly as I could, waiting to be sent for below. TheHebe, in fact, was the very beauty of a twenty-eight; taking the shine, and the wind, too, clean out of everything even at Plymouth, where I had seen her once a year or two before; our poor dear oldIrisherself had scarce such a pattern of a hull, falling in, as it did, from the round swell of her bilge, to just under the plank-sheer, and spreading out again with her bright black top-sides, till where the figure-head shot over the cutwater, and out of her full pair of bows, like a swan's neck out of its breast. As for theIris, our boatswain himself one day privately confessed to me, almost with tears in his eyes, that she tumbled home a thought too much just in front of the fore-chains, and he'd tried to get it softened off with dead planking and paint, but it wouldn't do; everybody saw through them. The truth was, to feel this fine ship under one, with her loose topsails hanging high against the gloom of the red gully towards Longwood, and the gay little town peeping just over her larboard bow, a mile away, it somehow or other cleared one's mind of a load.
"I was thinking already how, if one had the command of such a craft, to do something with her at sea—hang it! but surely that old judge couldn't be too proud to give him a fair hearing. By Jove! thought I—had one only wild enoughweather, off the Cape, say—if I wouldn't undertake to bother even a seventy-four a whole voyage through, till she struck her flag; in which case a fellow might really venture to hold his head up and speak his mind, lovely as Violet Hyde would be in Calcutta. But then, again,therewas St Helena towering red and rough over the ships, with the grand French Emperor hidden in it hard and fast, and all the work he used to give us at an end!
"Just at the moment, happening to catch sight of the American mate's sallow black visage over the brig-of-war's hammock-cloths, peering as he did from the cliffs to the lofty spars of the frigate, while his negro shipmates were to be made out nearer the bows—somehow or other the whole affair of their being burnt out and picked up started into my mind again, along with our late queer adventures in the Indiaman. Not to mention Captain Wallis's story, it flashed upon me all at once, for the first time, that the strange schooner was after some scheme as regarded the island; and a man more likely to try something uncommon than the Frenchman I never had seen yet. The truth was, but for my thoughts being otherwise taken up, I'd have wondered at my own confounded stupidity in not fathoming the thing sooner; whereas now I'm not going to deny it, I half began actually to wish him good success, or else a close miss of it, where either way one couldn't well fail having a share in the squall.
"At any rate, I saw it was cunningly enough gone about; this same burnt barque of the Yankee's, I perceived in a moment, was part of the plot; though as for meddling in it till I saw more, 'twas likely to spoil the whole; let alone making an ass of oneself in case of mistake. I was eyeing the shipwrecked mate, indeed, when one of the lieutenants told me politely the Admiral wanted to see me in the cabin below.
"Not being much accustomed to admirals' society, as a little white-haired fellow-reefer of mine once said at a tea-party ashore, I came in at the door with rather an awkward bow, no doubt; for Sir Dudley, who was sitting on the sofa with his cocked hat and sword beside him, talking to Captain Wallis, turned his head at the captain's word, as if he were trying to keep in a smile. A tall, fine-looking man he was, and few seamen equal to him for handling a large fleet, as Iknew, though his manners were finished enough to have made him easy in a king's court. As for the captain of theHebe, he was leaning out of an open stern-window, seemingly a young man; but who he might be I didn't know at the moment. The Admiral had only a question or two to put, before he looked back to Captain Wallis again, remarking it was clear he had brought away the wrong man. 'I didn't think you were so dull in thePodargus,' said he, smiling, 'as to let an Indiaman play off such a trick on you—eh, Captain Wallis!'
"Captain Wallis glanced round the cabin, and then sideways down at Sir Dudley's cocked hat, in a funny enough way, as much as to say he took all the blame on himself; and it struck me more than ever what a kind heart the man had in him—if you only set aside his hatred to Bonaparte, which in fact was nothing else but a twisted sort of proof of the same thing. 'Pooh, pooh, Wallis,' continued Sir Dudley, 'we can't do anything in the matter; though, if the service were better than it really is at present, I should certainly incline to question a smart young fellow like this, that has held His Majesty's commission, for idling in an Indiaman after the lady passengers! I am afraid, sir,' said he to me, 'you've lost your passage, though—unless the captain of theHebewill give you his second berth here, to make amends. You need not be afraid, Lord Frederick!' added he, looking toward the captain of the frigate, and raising his voice; 'you do not know him, after all, I suppose!' The captain drew in his head, saying he had been doubtful about one of the pivots of the rudder, then turned full round and looked uneasily at me, on which his face brightened immediately, and he said, 'No, Sir Dudley, I do not!' I was still in ignorance for a moment or so, myself, who this titled young post-captain might be, though I had certainly seen him before; till all at once I recollected him, with a start as pleasant to me as his seemed to him atnotknowing me. Both Westwood and I had been midshipmen together for a while in theOrion, fifty-gun ship, wherehewas second lieutenant, several years before. As for me, I was too fond of a frigate to stay longer in her than I could help; but I remembered my being a pest to the second lieutenant, and Tom's being a favourite of his, so that he stayed behind me, and got master's-mate as soon as he was 'passed.'
"The Honourable Frederick Bury he was then, and the handsomest young fellow in the squadron, as well as the best-natured aboard; I don't believe he knew how to splice in a dead-eye, and any of the masters'-mates could take charge of the ship better in a rough night, I daresay; but for a gallant affair in the way of hard knocks, with management to boot, there wasn't his match. He never was known to fail when he took a thing in hand; lost fewer men, too, than anyone else did; and whenever there turned up anything ticklish for the boats, it was always 'Mr Bury will lead.' 'The Honourable Bury,' we used to call him, and 'Fighting Free-the-deck.' Westwood was one of his school, whereasIhad learnt from Jacobs in a merchantman's forecastle; and many a time did we play off such tricks on the second lieutenant as coming gravely aft to him during the watch, three or four of us together, me carrying a bit of rope where a 'Turk's-head' or a 'mouse' was to be worked, while I asked him innocently to show us the way. Or else it was some dispute we contrived beforehand, as to the best plan of sending up new topmasts at sea, or running out of a 'round' gale in the Indian Ocean, on which the men forward would be all ready to break out laughing; and the second lieutenant, after thinking a moment, would quietly pitch upon me to go aloft, and study the point for two hours at the mast-head.
"'What isyourname then, young man?' inquired Sir Dudley Aldcombe of me. The instant I told him, Lord Frederick Bury gave me another look, then a smile. 'What?' said he, 'Collins that was in theOrion?' 'Yes, Lord Frederick,' said I, 'the same; I was third in theIrisoff the West African coast since then.' 'Why,' said he, 'I recollect you quite well, Mr Collins, although you have grown a foot, I think, sir—but your eye reminds me of sundry pranks you used to play on board! What nickname was it your messmates called you, by-the-by?' 'Something foolish enough, I suppose, my lord,' replied I, biting my lip; 'but I remember clearly having the honour to steer the second cutter in-shore one dark night near Dunkirk, when your lordship carried the Dutch brig and the two French chasse-marées——'
"'Faith,' broke in the captain of theHebe, 'you've a better memory than I have—I do not recollect any chasse-marées at all that time, Mr Collins!' 'Why,' said I, 'I gota knock on the head from a fellow in a red shirt—that always kept me in mind.' 'Oh,' remarked the Admiral to Captain Wallis, laughing, 'Lord Frederick Bury must have had so many little parties of the kind that his memory can't be expected to be very nice! However, I shall go ashore at present, gentlemen, leaving theHebeand you to dispose of this runaway lieutenant in some way or other. Only you'd better settle it before Admiral Plampin arrives!' 'Have you seen the—the—Longwood lately, Sir Dudley?' asked the captain of thePodarguscarelessly. 'Yes, not many days ago I had an interview,' said the Admiral gravely; 'proud as ever, and evidently resolved not to flinch from his condition. 'Tis wonderful the command that man has over himself, Wallis—he speaks of the whole world and its affairs like one that sees into them, and had them still nearly under his foot! All saving those miserable squabbles with Plantation House, which—but, next time I shall take my leave, and wash my hands of the whole concern, I am glad to think!'
"Lord Frederick was talking to me meanwhile at the other end of the cabin, but I was listening in spite of myself to Sir Dudley Aldcombe, and noticed that Captain Wallis made no answer. 'By-the-way, Wallis,' continued the Admiral, ''tis curious that he seemed anxious more than once to know what you think of him—I believe he would like to see you!' 'To seeme!' said the commander of thePodargus, suddenly. 'At last, does he! No, Sir Dudley, he and I neverwillmeet; he ought to have thought of it twelve years sooner! God knows,' he went on, 'the commander of a ten-gun brig is too small a man to see the Emperor Napoleon a prisoner; but in ten years of war, Sir Dudley, what mightn't one have been, instead of being remembered after as only plain John Wallis, whom Bonaparte kept all that time in prison, and who was sent in course of time, to cruise off St Helena?' Here the Admiral said something about a British sailor not keeping malice, and Captain Wallis looked up at him gravely. 'No,' replied he; 'no, Sir Dudley, I shouldn't havechosenthe thing; but in the meantime I'm only doing my duty. There's a gloomy turn in my mind by this time, no doubt; but you've no idea, Sir Dudley, how the thought of other people comes into one's head when he's years shut up—soImay stand for many a one Bonaparte will never seemore than myself, that'll ring him round surer than those rocks there, though they're dead and in their graves, Sir Dudley!' The Admiral shook his head, observing that Napoleon was no common man, and oughtn't to be judged as such. 'Too many victories in that eye of his, I suspect, Captain Wallis,' said he, 'for either Plantation House or his own conscience to break his spirit!'
"Ay, ay, sir,' answered the captain respectfully, 'excuse me, Sir Dudley, but there it is—so long as he's got his victories to fall back upon, he can't see how, if he'd regarded common men more, with all belonging to them, he wouldn't have been here! Why did Providence shut him up in a dead volcano, with blue water round it, Sir Dudley, if it wasn't to learn somehow or other he was a man after all?' Sir Dudley Aldcombe shrugged his shoulders and looked to Lord Frederick, upon which he rose, and the two captains followed him out of the cabin; in five minutes I heard the side piped for the Admiral's leaving, and soon after the captain of theHebecame below again.
"'This is a disagreeable affair of your old messmate's, Mr Collins,' said he seriously. 'You are, perhaps, not aware that Captain Duncombe was a relative of my own, and the fact of his property having fallen by will to myself, rendered my position the more peculiarly disagreeable, had I been obliged not only to recognise Lieutenant Westwood here, but afterwards to urge proceedings against him, even if he were let off by court-martial. I cannot tell you how the sight of a stranger, as I thought, relieved me, sir!' 'Indeed, Lord Frederick!' replied I, too much confused in the circumstances to say more. However, his lordship's manner soon set me at my ease, the old good-humoured smile coming over his fine features again, while he went on to offer me the place of his second lieutenant, who was going home very ill by one of the homeward-bound Indiamen; adding, that Sir Dudley would confirm the appointment; indeed, he could scarce help himself, he said, as there was nobody else he could get at present.
"'You must be a thorough good sailor by this time, Collins,' continued he, 'if you have gone on at the rate you used to do. I remember how fond you were of having charge for a minute or two of the oldOrion, or when I letyou put her about in my watch. Why they called you "Young Green" I never could understand, unless it wasut lucus a non lucendo, as we used to say at Eton, you know. Well, what do you say?' Now, as you may suppose, the idea of boxing about St Helena, for Heaven knew how long, didn't at all suit my liking—with the thought of theSeringapatamsteering away from Bombay the whole time, and a hundred notions of Violet Hyde in India—'twould have driven me madder than the Temple did Captain Wallis: but it was only thefirstpart of my mind I gave Lord Frederick. 'What!' exclaimed he, with a flush over his face, and drawing up his tall figure, 'you didn't suppose,Ishould remain here? Why, theHebeis on her way for Calcutta and Canton, and will sail as soon as theConquerorarrives at Jamestown with Admiral Plampin.' 'Your lordship is very kind,' said I, looking down to cover my delight; 'and if I am not worthy of the post it shan't be my fault, Lord Frederick.' 'Ah, very good!' said he smiling; ''tis an opportunity you oughtn't to let slip, Collins, let me tell you! For my own part, I should just as soon cut out a pirate in the Straits of Malacca as a French brig in the Channel; and there are plenty of them, I hear, there. As for a chase, sir, I flatter myself you won't easily see a finer thing than theHebespreading her cloth after one of those fast proas will be—I think you are just the fellow to make her walk, too, Mr Collins—pah! to compare a day on the Derby turf withthat, would be a sin! You have no idea, sir, how one longs for a fair horizon again, and brisk breezes, when so ineffably tired out of all those ball-rooms, and such things as you see about town just now—only I fear I shall wish to be second lieutenant again, eh?'
"The noble captain of theHebeturned to look out through the stern window to seaward, his face losing the weary sort of half-melancholy cast it had shown for the last minute, while his eye glistened; and it struck me how well matched theHebeand her commander were; you'd have said both had good blood in them, both being models to look at of their kind, and the frigate lifting under you at the moment, from the keel upward, with a check aloft in her main-topsail, that lifted her stem to the surge. A small telescope rolled off the sofa on to the cabin deck, and asI picked it up, another gust could be heard coming down St James Valley from inside the island; through the gun-port one saw the trees wave over the hot white houses in the bright-coloured little town, while the ship's canvas gave another flutter above-decks. Lord Frederick laughed, and said, 'Then I suppose we need say no more about it, Mr Collins, except referring once for all to Sir Dudley?' I bowed, and the upshot was, that, an hour or two after, I had my acting commission sent me from the Admiral, the same boat having called at thePodargusfor my things; upon which Lord Frederick introduced me to the first lieutenant, and I found myself once more doing duty in the service—theHebestanding out to leeward with the last light, just as thePodarguswas tripping anchor to beat round again the other way. As for our friends from the burnt vessel, I must say I had forgot them already, for the time at least.
"Every block, crag, and knot in the huge crust of the rock shone terribly bright for a minute or two, aloft from over the yard-ends, as she stood suddenly out into the fiery gleam of the sun going down many a mile in the Atlantic. Then up leapt the light keener and keener to the very topmost peak, till you'd have thought it went in like a living thing behind a telegraph, that stood out against a black cleft betwixt two cliffs. We saw the evening gun off Ladder Hill flash upon the deep blue of the sky, seemingly throwing up the peak and flagstaff a dozen feet higher; and the boom of the gun sounding in among the wild hills and hollows within the island, as if one heard it going up to Longwood door. Scarce was it lost, ere a star or two were to be seen in the shadow on the other side, and you listened almost, in the hush following upon the gunfire, for an echo to it, or something stranger; in place of which theHebewas already forging ahead in the dark to get well clear of the land, every wave bringing its own blackness with it up toward her fore-chains, then sparkling back to her waist in the seeth of foam as she felt the breeze; while St Helena lay towering along to larboard, with its ragged top blotting against the deep dark blue of the sky, all filling as it was with the stars.
"I had the middle watch that night, the ship being under short canvas, and slowly edging down to make the mostleewardly point of the island, from which she was to beat up again at her leisure by the morning. All we had to do was to keep a good look-out, on the one hand, into the streak of starlight to seaward, and on the other along the foot of the rocks, as well as holding her well in hand, in case of some sudden squall through the valleys from inside.
"However, I shan't easily forget the thoughts that ran in my mind, walking the quarter-deck with the frigate under charge, the first time I noticed Orion and the Serpent begin to wheel glittering away from over Diana's Peak—the others stealing quietly into sight after them, past the leech of our main-topsail; scarce an English star to be seen for the height of the island off our quarter; some of the men on one side of the booms humming a song about Napoleon's dream, which you'll hear to this day in ships' forecastles; another yarning solemnly, on the other side, about some old sweetheart of his—but all of them ready to jump at my own least word. In the morning, however, there we were, stretching back by degrees to go round the lee side of the island again, the haze melting off Diana's Peak as before, and the sea rolling in swells as blue as indigo, to the huge red lumps of bare crag; while the bright surges leapt out of them all along the frigate's side, and the spray rose at times to her figure-head.
"During the day we cruised farther out, and theHebehad enough to do in seeing off one Indiaman for home, and speaking another outward-bound craft, that passed forty miles off or so, without touching; the Governor's telegraphs were eternally at work on the heights, bothering her for the least trifle, and making out a sail sixty miles off, it was said. For my part, I was pretty well tired of it already, sincerely wishing for theConqueror, with Admiral Plampin, to heave in sight; but glad enough all aboard theHebewere, when, after an entire week of the thing, it came to her turn, with theNewcastleandPodargus, to lie at anchor off Jamestown, where half the ship's company at a time had their liberty ashore.
"For my part, I had to see after the frigate's water-tanks, and a gang at the rigging, till the afternoon, when Lord Frederick took the first lieutenant and myself ashore with him in his gig; and no joke it was landing even there, wherethe swell of the surf nigh-hand hove her right up on the quay, while you had to look sharp, in case the next wave washed you back again off your feet. The whole place was hot as could be from the sun's rays off the rocks, slanting bare red to the cloudless sky, on both sides of the neat little gaudy houses crowded in the mouth of the valley, which narrowed away beyond the rise of the street, till you didn't see how you'd get farther. But for the air of the sea, indeed, with now and then a breath down out of the hills, 'twas for all the world like a half-kindled oven; except under the broad trees along the Government esplanade, where one couldn't have stood for people. What with blacks, lascars, Chinamen, and native 'Yamstocks,' together with liberty-men from the men-of-war and Indiamen, as well as reefers trotting about on ponies and donkeys, the very soldiers could scarce get down the foot of the road up Ladder Hill; as for the little town holding one half of them, it was out of the question, but the noise and kick-up were beyond aught else of the kind, save in a Calcutta bazaar. Accordingly, it was pleasant enough at last to come within a shady walk of thick green fig-trees, growing almost out of the rock near the main battery, above the small sound of the water far below; the very sea looking bluer through the leaves, while some birds no bigger than wrens hopped, chirruping, about the branches.
"Here we met Sir Dudley Aldcombe coming down from the batteries along with some Company's officers from India, and he stopped to speak to Lord Frederick, giving the first lieutenant and me a bow in return, as we lifted our hats and waited behind. The Admiral proposed to get Lord Frederick a pass to visit Napoleon along with himself next day, as theConquerorwould probably arrive very soon. 'You will oblige me greatly, Sir Dudley,' said the captain of theHebe. 'He seems as fond of seeing a true sailor,' said the Admiral, 'as if we'd never done him harm. Things will be worse after I go. By-the-way,' added he suddenly, ''tis curious enough, but there's one person in the island at present has made wonderful progress in Sir Hudson's good graces, for the short time—that American botanist, or whatever he calls himself, that Captain Wallis took off the burnt vessel on his way here. Your new lieutenant was aboard at the time, you know, Lord Frederick.' 'You saw him, sir, of course?' said the Admirallooking to me. 'Only for a minute that night, Sir Dudley,' said I; 'and afterwards both he and his servant were under the surgeon's charge below.' 'Well,' continued Sir Dudley to the captain, 'they seem quite recovered now; for I saw them to-day up at Plantation House, where the philosopher was in close discourse with the Governor about plants and such things; while her ladyship was as much engaged with the assistant, who can only speak Spanish. A remarkable looking man the latter is, too; a Mexican, I understand, with Indian blood in him, apparently—whereas his principal has a strong Yankee twang; and queer enough it was to hear him snuffling away as solemnly as possible aboutbuttanyand such things—besides his hinting at some great discovery likely to be made in the island, which Sir Hudson seemed rather anxious to keep quiet fromme.'
"What Sir Dudley said made me prick up my ears, as you may fancy. I could scarce believe the thing; 'twas so thoroughly rich and so confoundedly cool at once, to risk striking at the very heart of things this way with the Governor himself; but the whole scheme, so far, flashed upon me in a moment, evidently carried on, as it had been all along, by some one bold enough for anything earthly, and with no small cunning besides. All that he needed, no doubt, wassomebody elsewith the devil's own impudence and plenty of talk; nor, if I'd thought for a day together, could one have pitched easily upon a customer as plausible as our friend Daniel, who hadn't a spark of fear in him, I knew, just owing to his want of respect for aught in the entire creation. Still, I couldn't, for the life of me, see what the end of their plan was to be, unless the strange Frenchman might have been some general or other under Bonaparte, and just wanted to see his old commander once more; which, thought I, I'll be hanged if I don't think fair enough, much pains as he had put himself to for the thing.
"'How!' asked Lord Frederick, 'a discovery did you say, Sir Dudley?' 'Oh, nothing of the kindweshould care about, after all,' said the Admiral; 'from what I could gather, 'twas only scientific, though the American called it "apretty importaint fact." This Mr Mathewson Brown, I believe, was sent by the States Government as botanist in an expedition to southward, and has leave from Sir Hudson to use his opportunitybefore the next Indiaman sails, for examining part of the island, and to-day he thought he found the same plants in St Helena as he did in Gough's Island and Tristan d'Acunha, twelve hundred miles off, near the Cape, showing, as he said, how once on a time there must have been land between them, perhaps as far as Ascension!' 'Why,' put in Lord Frederick,' that would have made a pretty good empire, even for Napoleon!' 'So it would, my lord,' said Sir Dudley, 'much better than Elba; but the strangest part of it is, this Mr Brown was just telling his Excellency, as I entered the room, that some of the ancient philosophers wrote about this said country existing in the Atlantic before the Flood—how rich it was, with the kings it had, and the wars carried on there; till, on account of their doings, no doubt, what with an earthquake, a volcano, and the ocean together, they all sunk to the bottom except the tops of the mountains! Now, I must say,' continued the Admiral, 'all this learning seemed to one to come rather too much by rote out of this gentleman's mouth, and the American style of his talk made it somewhat ludicrous, though he evidently believed in what may be all very true—particularly in mentioning the treasures that must lie under water for leagues round, or even in nooks about the St Helena rocks; I thought his very teeth watered. As for Sir Hudson, he had caught at the idea altogether, but rather in view of an historical work on the island, from the earliest times till now—and I believe he means to accompany the two botanists himself over toward Longwood to-morrow, where we may very likely get sight of them.'
"'O—h!' thought I, and Lord Frederick Bury smiled. 'Rather a novelty, indeed!' said he; and the first lieutenant looked significantly enough to me, as we leant over the battery-wall, watching the hot horizon through the spars of the ships before Jamestown. 'What amused me,' Sir Dudley said again, 'was the American botanist's utter indifference, when I asked if he had seen anything of "The General" in the distance. The Governor started, glancing sharp at Mr Brown, and I noticed his dark companion give a sudden side-look from the midst of his talk with her ladyship; whereupon the botanist merely pointed with his thumb to the floor, asking coolly 'what it was to science?' 'At this,' added Sir Dudley to the captain, 'His Excellency seemed much relieved; andafter having got leave for myself and your lordship to-morrow, I left them still in the spirit of it. It certainly struck me that, in the United States themselves, educated men in general couldn't have such a vulgar manner about them—in fact, I thought the Mexican attendant more the gentleman of the two—his face was turned half from me most of the time, but still it struck me as remarkably intelligent.' 'Ah,' said Lord Frederick carelessly, 'all the Spaniards have naturally a noble sort of air, you know, Sir Dudley—they'll never make republicans!' 'And I must say,' added the Admiral, as they strolled out of the shade up the battery-steps, 'little as I know of Latin, what this Mr Brown useddidseem to me fearfully bad!'
"'And no wonder!' thought I, from a Yankee schoolmaster as I had found my late shipmate was, before he thought of travelling; but the valuable Daniel turning his hand to help out some communication or other, no doubt, with Napoleon Bonaparte in St Helena, took me at first as so queer an affair, that I didn't know whether to laugh at him or admire his Yankee coolness, when he ran such risks. As for the feasibleness of actually getting the prisoner clear out of the island, our cruising on guard was enough to show me it would be little short of a miracle; yet I couldn't help thinking they meant to try it; and in case of a dark night, which the south-easter was very likely to bring, if it shifted or freshened a little, why, I knew you needn't call anything impossible that a cool head and a bold heart had to do with, provided only they could get their plans laid inside and out so as to tally. The more eager I got for next day, when it would be easy enough for any of us to go up inland after Lord Frederick, as far as Hut's Gate at least. Meantime, the first lieutenant and I walked up together to where the little town broke into a sort of suburb of fancy cottages, with verandahs and green venetians in bungalow style, scattered to both sides of the rock amongst little grass-plots and garden patches—every foot of ground made use of. And a perfect gush of flowers and leaves it was, clustering over the tiles of the low roofs, while you saw through a thicket of poplars and plantains right into the back of the gully, with a ridge of black rock closing it fair up, and Side Path, as they call the road to windward, winding overhead along the crag behind the houses, out ofsight round a mass of cliffs. Every here and there, a runlet of water came trickling down from above the trees to water their roots; you saw the mice in hundreds scampering in and out of holes in the dry stone, with now and then a big ugly rat that turned round to face you, being no doubt fine game to the St Helena people, ill off as they all seemed for something to do—except the Chinese with their huge hats, hoeing away under almost every tree one saw, and the Yamstock fishermen to be seen bobbing for mullet outside the ships, in a blaze of light sufficient to bake any heads but their own. Every cottage had seven or eight parrots in it, apparently; a cockatoo on a stand by the door, or a monkey up in a box—not to speak of canaries in the window, and white goats feeding about with bells round their necks: so you may suppose what a jabbering, screaming, whistling, and tinkling there was up the whole hollow, added to no end of children and young ladies making the most of the shade as it got near nightfall—and all that were out of doors came flocking down Side Path.
"Both of us having leave ashore that night, for a ball in one of 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 ourHebe'sfirst 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 theSeringapatam'sdeck 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! everythingcalled 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 up at the head of the gully 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 astiff 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 withhimup 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 Jamestown 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 someone in the Jew Solomon's toy-shop, by the forenoon, that Bonaparte 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 Jamestown 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 townspeople'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.