We rowed on, the schooner every now and then taking the ground, but she was always quickly warped off again by a kedge; at length, after we had in all proceeded, it might be, about a mile from the beach, we came to a boom of strong timber clamped with iron, stretching across the creek. We were not unprepared for this; one of two old 32-pound carronades, which, in anticipation of some obstruction of the sort, had been got on deck from amongst the Gleam’s ballast, and properly slung, was now made fast to the middle timber of the boom, and let go, when the weight of it sunk it to the bottom, and we passed on. We pulled on for about half a mile further, when I noticed, high up on a sunny cliff, that shot boldly out into the clear blue heavens, a small red flag suddenly run up to the top of a tall, scathed, branchless palm tree, where it flared for a moment in the breeze like the flame of a torch, and then as suddenly disappeared. “Come, they are on the look-out for us I see.”
The hills continued to close on us as we advanced, and that so precipitously, that we might have been crushed to pieces had half-a dozen active fellows, without any risk to themselves, for the trees would have screened them, simply loosened some of the fragments of rock that impended over us, so threateningly, it seemed, as if a little finger could have sent them bounding and thundering down the mountain side; but this either was not the game of the people we were in search of, or Obed’s spirit and energy had been crushed out of him by the heart depressing belief that his hours were numbered, for no active obstruction was offered.
We now suddenly rounded an abrupt corner of the creek, and there we were full in front of the schooners, who, with the felucca in advance, were lying in line of battle, with springs on their cables. The horrible black pennant was, in the present instance, nowhere to be seen; indeed, why such an impolitic step as ever to have shown it at all was taken in the first attack, I never could understand; for the force was too small to have created any serious fear of being captured, (unless indeed it had been taken for an advanced guard, supported by a stronger,) while it must have appeared probable to Obediah, that the loss of the two boats would in all likelihood lead to a more powerful attempt, when, if it were successful, the damning fact of having fought under such an infernal emblem must have ensured a pirate’s death on the gibbet to every soul who was taken, unless he had intended to have murdered all the witnesses of it. But since proof in my person and the pilot’s existed, now, if ever, was the time for mortal resistance, and to have hoisted it, for they knew that they all fought with halters about their necks. They had all the Spanish flag flying except the Wave, which showed American colours, and the felucca, which had a white flag hoisted, from which last, whenever our gig appeared, a canoe shoved off, and pulled towards us. The officer, if such he might be called, also carried a white flag in his hand. He was a daring-looking fellow, and dashed up along-side of me. The incomprehensible folly of trying at this time of day to cloak the real character of the vessels, puzzled me, and does so to this hour. I have never got a clew to it, unless it was that Obed’s strong mind had given way before his superstitious fears, and others had now assumed the right of both judging and acting for him in this his closing scene. The pirate officer at once recognised me, but seemed neither surprised nor disconcerted at the strength of the force which accompanied me. He asked me in Spanish if I commanded it; I told him I did not, that the captain of the schooner was the senior officer.
“Then will you be good enough, to go on board with me, to interpret for me?”
“Certainly.”
In half a minute we were both on the Gleam’s deck, the crews of the boats that had her in tow lying on their oars.
“You are the commander of this force?” said the Spaniard.
“I am,” said old Gasket, who had figged himself out in full puff, after the manner of the ancients, as if he had been going to church, instead of to fight; “and who the hell are you?”
“I command one of these Spanish schooners, sir, which your boats so unwarrantably attacked a week ago, although you are at peace with Spain. But even had they been enemies, they were in a friendly port, which should have protected them.”
“All very good oysters,” quoth old Dick; “and pray was it an honest trick of you to cabbage my young friend, Lieutenant Cringle there, as if you had been slavers kidnapping the Bungoes in the Bight of Biafra, and then to fire on and murder my people when sent in to claim him?”
“As to carrying off that young gentleman, it was no affair of ours; he was brought away by the master of that American schooner; but so far as regards firing on your boats, I believe they fired first. But the crews are not murdered; on the contrary, they have been well used, and are now on board that felucca. I am come to surrender the whole fifteen to you.”
“The whole fifteen! and what have you made of the other twelve?”
“Gastados,” said the fellow, with all the sangfroid in the world, “gastados, (spent or expended) by their own folly.”
“Oh, they are expended, are they? then give us the fifteen.”
“Certainly, but you will in this case withdraw your force, of course.”
“We shall see about that—go and send us the men.” He jumped down into the canoe, and shoved off;—whenever he reached the felucca, he struck the white flag, and hoisted the Spanish in its stead, and by hauling on a spring, he brought her to cover the largest schooner so effectually, that we could not fire a shot at her without going through the felucca. We could see all the men leave this latter vessel in two canoes, and go on board one of the other craft. There was now no time to be lost, so I dashed at the felucca in the gig, and broke open the hatches, where we found the captured seamen and their gallant leader, Lieutenant——, in a sorry plight, expecting nothing but to be blown up, or instant death by shot or the knife. We released them, and, sending to the Gleam for ammunition and small arms, led the way in the felucca, by Mr Gasket’s orders, to the attack, the corvette’s launch supporting us; while the schooner with the other craft were scraping up as fast as they could. We made straight for the largest schooner, which with her consorts now opened a heavy fire of grape and musketry, which we returned with interest. I can tell little of what took place till I found myself on the pirate’s quarterdeck, after a desperate tussle, and having driven the crew overboard, with dead and wounded men thickly strewn about, and our fellows busy firing at their surviving antagonists, as they were trying to gain the shore by swimming.
Although the schooner we carried was the Commodore, and commanded by Obediah in person, yet the pirates, that is, the Spanish part of them, by no means showed the fight I expected. While we were approaching, no fire could be hotter, and their yells and cheers were tremendous; but the instant we laid her along-side with the felucca, and swept her decks with a discharge of grape from the carronade, under cover of which we boarded on the quarter, while the launch’s people scrambled up at the bows, their hearts failed, a regular panic overtook them, and they jumped overboard, without waiting for a taste either of cutlass or boarding-pike. The captain himself, however, with about ten Americans, stood at bay round the long gun, which, notwithstanding their great inferiority in point of numbers to our party, they manfully fired three several times at us, after we had carried her aft; but we were so close that the grape came past us like a round shot, and only killed one hand at each discharge, whereas at thirty yards farther off, by having had room to spread, it might have made a pretty tableau of the whole party. I hailed Obed twice to surrender, while our people, staggered by the extreme hardihood of the small group, hung back for an instant; but he either did not hear me, or would not, for the only reply he seemed inclined to make was by slewing round the gun so as to bring me on with it, and the next moment a general rush was made, when the whole party was cut down, with three exceptions, one of whom was Obed himself, who getting on the gun, made a desperate bound over the men’s heads, and jumped overboard. He struck out gallantly, the shot pattering round him like the first of a thunder shower, but he dived apparently unhurt, and I lost sight of him.
The other vessels having also been carried, the firing was all on our side by this time, and I, along with the other officers, was exerting myself to stop the butchery.
“Cease firing, men; for shame, you see they no longer resist.” And my voice was obeyed by all except the fifteen we had released, who were absolutely mad with fury-perfect fiends; such uncontrollable fierceness I had never witnessed, indeed, I had nearly cut one of them down before I could make them knock off firing.
“Don’t fire, sir,” cried I to one.
“Ay, ay, sir; but that scoundrel made me wash his shirts,” and he let drive at a poor devil, who was squattering and swimming away towards the shore, and shot him through the head.
“By heavens! I will run you through, if you fire at that man!” shouted I to another, a marine, who was taking aim at no less a personage than friend Obed, who had risen to breathe, and was swimming after the others, but the very last man of all.
“No, by G—? he made me wash his trowsers, sir.”
He fired—the pirate stretched out his arms, turned slowly on his back, with his face towards me. I thought he gave me a sort of “Et tu, Brute” look, but I dare say it was fancy—his feet began to sink, and he gradually disappeared, a few bubbles of froth and blood marking the spot where he went down. He had been shot dead. I will not attempt to describe my feelings at this moment, they burned themselves in on my heart at the time, and the impression is indelible. Whether I had or had not acted, in one sense, unjustly, by ousting myself so conspicuously forward in the attempt to capture him, after what had passed between us, forced itself upon my judgment. I had certainly promised that I would, in no way that I could help, be instrumental in his destruction or seizure, provided he landed me at St Jago, or put me on board a friendly vessel. He did neither, so his part of the compact might be considered broken; but then it was out of his power to have fulfilled it; besides, he not only threatened my life subsequently, but actually wounded me; still, however, on great provocation. But what “is writ, is writ.” He has gone to his account, pirate as he was, murderer if you will; yet I had, and still have, a tear for his memory,—and many a time have I prayed on my bare knees that his blue agonized dying look might be erased from my brain; but this can never be. What he had been I never learned; but it is my deliberate opinion, that, with a clear stage and opportunity, he would have forced himself out from the surface of society for good or for evil. The unfortunates who survived him, but to expiate their crimes on the gibbet at Port Royal, said he had joined them from a New York privateer, but they knew nothing farther of him beyond the fact, that by his skill and desperate courage, within a month he had by common acclaim been elected captain of the whole band. There was a story current on board the corvette, of a small trading craft, with a person answering his description, having been captured in the Chesapeake, by one of the squadron, and sent to Halifax for adjudication, (the master, as in most cases of the kind, being left on board,) which from that hour had never been heard of, neither vessel, nor prize crew, nor captain, until two Americans were taken out of a slaver, off the Cape de Verds by the Firebrand, about a year afterwards, after a most brave and determined attempt to escape, both of whom were however allowed to enter, but subsequently deserted off Sandy Hook by swimming ashore, in consequence of a pressed hand hinting that one of them, surmised to be Obed, had been the master of the vessel above mentioned.
All resistance having ceased, the few of the pirates who escaped having scampered into the woods, where it would have been vain to follow them, we secured our prisoners, and at the close of a bloody day, for fatal had it been to friend and foe, the prizes were got under weigh, and before nightfall we were all at sea, sailing in a fleet, under convoy of the corvette and Gleam.
“This disease is beyond my practice.”Macbeth, Vi.59.
The second and acting third-lieutenants were on board the prizes—the purser was busy in his vocation—the doctor ditto Indeed, he and his mates had more on their hands than they could well manage. The first lieutenant was engaged on deck, and the master was in his cot, suffering from a severe contusion; so when got on board the corvette, and dived into the gunroom in search ol some crumbs of comfort, the deuce a living soul was there to welcome me, except the gunroom steward, who speedily produced some cold meat, and asked me if I would take a glass of swizzle.
The food I had no great fancy to, although I had not tasted a morsel since six o’clock in the morning, and it was now eight in the evening; but the offer of the grog sounded gratefully in mine ear, and I was about tackling to a stout rummer of the same, when a smart dandified shaver, with gay mother-of-pearl buttons on his jacket, as thick set as peas, presented his tallow chops at the door.
“Captain Transom desires me to say, that he will be glad of your company in the cabin, Mr Cringle.”
“My compliments—I will wait on him so soon as I have had a snack. We have had no dinner in the gunroom to-day yet, you know, Mafame.”
“Why, it was in the knowledge of that the Captain sent me, sir. He has not had any dinner either; but it is now on the table, and he waits for you.”
I was but little in spirits, and, to say sooth, was fitter for my bed than society; but the Captain’s advances had been made with so much kindliness, that I got up, and made a strong endeavour to rouse myself; and, having made my toilet as well as my slender means admitted, I followed the Captain’s steward into the cabin.
I started—why, I could not well tell—as the sentry at the door stood to his arms when I passed in; and, as if I had been actually possessed by some wandering spirit, who had taken the small liberty of using my faculties and tongue without my concurrence, I hastily asked the man if he was an American?—He stared in great astonishment for a short space, turned his quid—and then rapped out, as angrily as respect for a commissioned officer would let him,—“No, by ——, sir!”
This startled me as much as the question I had almost unconsciously—and, I may say, involuntarily—put to the marine had surprised him, and I made a full stop, and leant back against the door-post. The Captain, who was walking up and down the cabin, had heard me speak, but without comprehending the nature of my question, and now recalled me in some measure to myself, by enquiring if I wanted any thing. I replied, hurriedly, that I did not.
“Well, Mr Cringle, dinner is ready—so take that chair at the foot of the table, will you?”
I sat down, mechanically, as it appeared to me—for a strange swimming dizzy sort of sensation had suddenly overtaken me, accompanied by a whoreson tingling, as Shakespeare hath it, in my ears. I was unable to eat a morsel; but I could have drunk the ocean, had it been claret or vin-de-grave-to both of which I helped myself as largely as good manners would allow, or a little beyond, mayhap. All this while the Captain was stowing his cargo with great zeal, and tifting away at the fluids as became an honest sailor after so long a fast, interlarding his operations with a civil word to me now and then, without any especial regard as to the answer I made him, or, indeed, caring greatly whether I answered him or not.
“Sharp work you must have had, Mr Cringle—should have liked to have been with you myself. Help yourself, before passing that bottle—zounds, man, never take a bottle by the bilge—grasp the neck, man, at least in this fervent climate—thank you. Pity you had not caught the captain though. What you told me of that man very much interested me, coupled with the prevailing reports regarding him in the ship—daring dog he must have been—can’t forget how gallantly he weathered us when we chased him.”
I broke silence for the first time. Indeed, I could scarcely have done so sooner, even had I chosen it, for the gallant officer was rather continuous in his yam-spinning. However, he had nearly dined, and was leaning back, allowing the champaigne to trickle leisurely from a glass half a yard long, which he had applied to his lips, when I said, “Well, the imagination does sometimes play one strange tricks—I verily believe in second sight now, Captain, for at this very instant I am regularly the fool of my senses,——but pray don’t laugh at me;” and I lay back on my chair, and pressed my hands over my shut eyes and hot burning temples, which were now throbbing as if the arteries would have burst.
The Captain, who was evidently much surprised at my abruptness, said something hurriedly and rather sharply in answer, but I could not for the life of me mark what it was. I opened my eyes again, and looked towards the object that had before riveted my attention. It was neither more nor less than the Captain’s cloak, a plain, unpretending, substantial blue garment, lined with white, which, on coming below, he had cast carelessly down on the locker, that ran across the after part of the cabin behind him. It was about eighteen feet from me, and as there was no light nearer it than the swinging lamp over the table at which we were seated, the whole of the cabin thereabouts was thrown considerably into shade. The cape of the cloak was turned over, showing the white lining, and was rather bundled as it were into a round heap, about the size of a man’s head. When first I looked at it, there was a dreamy, glimmering indistinctness about it that I could not well understand, and I would have said, had it been possible, that the wrinkles and folds in it were beginning to be instinct with motion, to creep and crawl as it were. At all events, the false impression was so strong as to jar my nerves, and make me shudder with horror. I knew there was no such d—ting, as well as Macbeth—, but nevertheless it was with an indescribable feeling of curiosity, dashed with awe, that I stared intently at it, as if fascinated, while almost unwittingly I made the remark already mentioned.
I had expected that the unaccountable appearance which had excited my attention so strongly would have vanished with the closing of my eyes; but it did not, for when I looked at it again, the working and shifting of the folds of the cloth still continued, and even more distinctly than before.
“Very extraordinary all this,” I murmured to myself.
“Pray, Mr Cringle, be sociable, man,” said the Captain; “what the deuce do you see, that you stare over my shoulder in that way? Were a woman now, I should tremble to look behind me, while you were glaring aft in that wild, moonstruck sort of fashion.”
“By all that is astonishing,” I exclaimed in great agitation, “if the folds of the cape have not arranged themselves into the very likeness of his dying face! Why it is his face, and no fanciful grouping of my heated brain. Look there, sir—look there—I know it can’t be but there he lies,—the very features and upper part of the body, lith and limb, as when he disappeared beneath the water when he was shot dead.”
I felt the boiling blood, that had been rushing through my system like streams of molten lead, suddenly freeze and coagulate about my heart, impeding my respiration to a degree that I thought I should have been suffocated. I had the feeling as if my soul was going to take wing. It was not fear, nor could I say I was in pain, but it was so utterly unlike any thing I had ever experienced before, and so indescribable, that I thought to myself—“this may be death.”
“Why, what a changeable rose you are, Master Cringle,” said Captain Transom, good-naturedly; “your face was like the north-west moon in a fog but a minute ago, and now it is as pale as a lily@blue white, I declare. Why, my man, you must be ill, and seriously too.”
His voice dissipated the hideous chimera—the folds fell, and relapsed into their own shape, and the cloak was once more a cloak, and nothing more—I drew a long breath. “Ah, it is gone at last, thank God!”—and then aware of the strange effect my unaccountable incoherence must have had on the skipper, I thought to brazen it out by trying the free and easy line, which was neither more nor less than arrant impertinence in our relative positions. “Why, I have been heated a little, and amusing myself with sundry vain imaginings, but allow me to take wine with you, Captain,” filling a tumbler with vin-de-grave to the brim, as I spoke. “Success to you, sir—here’s to your speedy promotion—may you soon get a crack frigate; as for me I intend to be Archbishop of Canterbury, or maid of honour to the Queen of Sheba, or something in the heathen mythology.”
I drank off the wine, although I had the greatest difficulty in steadying my trembling hand, and carrying it to my lips; but notwithstanding my increasing giddiness, and the buzzing in my ears, and swimming of mine eyes, I noticed the Captain’s face of amazement as he exclaimed, “The boy is either mad or drunk, by Jupiter!”
I could not stand his searching and angry look, and in turning my eye, it again fell on the cloak, which now seemed to be stretched out at greater length, and to be altogether more voluminous than it was before. I was forcibly struck with this, for I was certain no one had touched it.
“By heavens! it heaves,” I exclaimed, much moved—“how is this? I never thought to have believed such things,——it stirs again—it takes the figure of a man—as if it were a pall covering his body. Pray, Captain Transom, what trick is this?—Is there any thing below that cloak there?”
“What cloak do you mean?”
“Why, that blue one lying on the locker there—is there any cat or dog in the cabin? “—and I started on my legs.—“Captain Transom,” I continued, with great vehemence, “for the love of God tell me what is there below that cloak.”
He looked surprised beyond all measure.
“Why, Mr Cringle, I cannot for the soul of me comprehend you; indeed I cannot; but, Mafame, indulge him. See if there be any thing below my cloak.”
The servant walked to the locker, and lifted up the cape of it, and was in the act of taking it from the locker, when I impetuously, desired the man to leave it alone.
“I can’t look on him again,” said I; while the faintishness increased, so that I could hardly speak. “Don’t move the covering from his face, for God’s sake—don’t remove it,” and I lay back in my chair, screening my eyes from the lamp with my hands, and shuddering with an icy chill from head to foot.
The Captain, who had hitherto maintained the well-bred, patronizing, although somewhat distant, air of a superior officer to an inferior who was his guest, addressed me now in an altered tone, and with a brotherly kindness.
“Mr Cringle, I have some knowledge of you, and I know many of your friends; so I must take the liberty of an old acquaintance with you. This day’s work has been a severe one, and your share in it, especially after your past fatigues, has been very trying, and as I will report it, I hope it may clap a good spoke in your wheel; but you are overheated, and have been over-excited; fatigue has broken you down, and I must really request you will take something warm, and turn in.—Here, Mafame, get the carpenter’s mate to secure that cleat on the weather-side there, and sling my spare cot for Mr Cringle. You will be cooler here than in the gunroom.”
I heard his words without comprehending their meaning. I sat and stared at him, quite conscious, all the time, of the extreme impropriety, not to say indecency, of my conduct; but there was a spell on me; I tried to speak, but could not; and, believing that I was either possessed by some dumb evil, or struck with palsy, I rose up, bowed to Captain Transom, and straightway hied me on deck.
I could hear him say to his servant, as I was going up the ladder, “Look after that young gentleman, Mafame, and send Isaac to the doctor, and bid him come here now;” and then, in a commiserating tone—“Poor young fellow, what a pity!”
When I got on deck all was quiet. The cool fresh air had an instantaneous effect on my shattered nerves, the violent throbbing in my head ceased, and I began to hug myself with the notion that my distemper, whatever it might have been, had beaten a retreat.
Suddenly I felt so collected and comfortable, as to be quite alive to the loveliness of the scene. It was a beautiful moonlight night; such a night as is nowhere to be seen without the Tropics, and not often within them. There was just breeze enough to set the sail to sleep, although not so strong as to prevent their giving a low murmuring flap now and then, when the corvette rolled a little heavier than usual on the long swell. There was not a cloud to be seen in the sky, not even a stray shred of thin fleecy gauzelike vapour, to mark the direction of the upper current of the air, by its course across the moon’s disk, which was now at the full, and about half-way up her track in the liquid heavens.
The small twinkling lights from millions of lesser stars, in that part of the firmament where she hung, round as a silver pot-lid shield I mean, were swamped in the flood of greenish-white radiance shed by her, and it was only a few of the first magnitude, with a planet here and there, that were visible to the naked eye, in the neighbourhood of her crystal bright globe; but the clear depth, and dark translucent purity of the profound, when the eye tried to pierce into it at the zenith, where the stars once more shone and sparkled thick and brightly, beyond the merging influence of the pale cold orb, no man can describe now——one could, once—but rest his soul, he is dead and then to look forth far into the night, across the dark ridge of many a heaving swell of living water—but, “Thomas Cringle, ahoy where the devil are you cruising to” So, to come back to my story. I went aft, and mounted the small poop, and looked towards the aforesaid moon, a glorious resplendent tropical moon, and not the paper lantern affair hanging in an atmosphere of fog and smoke, about which your blear-eyed poets haven’t so much. By the by, these gentry are fond of singing of the blessed sun—were they sailors they would bless the moon also, and be—to them, in place of writing much wearisome poetry regarding her blighting propensities. But I have lost the end of my yarn once more, in the strands of these parentheses. Lord, what a word to pronounce in the plural!—I can no more get out now, than a girl’s silk worm from the innermost of a nest of pill boxes, where, to ride the simile to death at once, I have warped the thread of my story so round and round me, that I can’t for the life of me unravel it. Very odd all this. Since I have recovered of this fever, every thing is slack about me; I can’t set up the shrouds and backstays of my mind, not to speak of bobstays, if I should die for it. The running rigging is all right enough, and the canvass is there; but I either can’t set it, or when I do, I find I have too little ballast, or I get involved amongst shoals, and white water, and breakers—don’t you hear them roar?—which I cannot weather, and crooked channels, under some lee-shore, through which I cannot scrape clear. So down must go the anchor, as at present, and there—there goes the chain cable, rushing and rumbling through the hausehole. But I suppose it will be all right by and by, as I get stronger.
“But rouse thee, Thomas! Where is this end of your yarn, that you are blameying about?”
“Avast heaving, you swab you—avast—if you had as much calomel in your corpus as I have at this present speaking—why you would be a lad of more mettle than I take you for, that is all.—You would have about as much quicksilver in your stomach, as I have in my purse, and all my silver has been quick, ever since I remember, like the jests of the gravedigger in Hamlett—but, as you say, where the devil is the end of this yarn?”
Ah, here it is! so off we go again—and looked forward towards the rising moon, whose shining wake of glow-worm-coloured light, sparkling in the small waves, that danced in the gentle wind on the heaving bosom of the dark blue sea, was right a-head of us, like a river of quicksilver with its course diminished in the distance to a point, flowing towards us, from the extreme verge of the horizon, through a rolling sea of ink, with the waters of which for a time it disdained to blend. Concentrated, and shining like polished silver afar off—intense and sparkling as it streamed down nearer, but becoming less and less brilliant as it Widened in its approach to us, until, like the stream of the great Estuary of the Magdalena, losing itself in the salt waste of waters, it gradually melted beneath us and around us into the darkness.
I looked aloft—every object appeared sharply cut out against the dark firmament, and the swaying of the mast-heads to and fro, as the vessel rolled, was so steady and slow, that they seemed stationary, while it was the moon and stars which appeared to vibrate and swing from side to side, high over head, like the vacillation of the clouds in a theatre, when the scene is first let down.
The masts, and yards, and standing and running rigging, looked like black pillars, and bars, and wires of iron, reared against the sky, by some mighty spirit of the night; and the sails, as the moon shone dimly through them, were as dark as if they had been tarpawlings. But when I walked forward and looked aft, what a beauteous change! Now each mast, with its gently swelling canvass, the higher sails decreasing in size, until they tapered away nearly to a point, though topsail, topgallant sail, royal and skysails, showed like towers of snow, and the cordage like silver threads, while each dark spar seemed to be of ebony, fished with ivory, as a flood of cold, pale, mild light streamed from the beauteous planet over the whole stupendous machine, lighting up the sand white decks, on which the shadows of the men, and of every object that intercepted the moonbeams, were cast as strongly as if the planks had been inlaid with jet.
There was nothing moving about the decks. The lookouts, aft, and at the gangways, sat or stood like statues half bronze, half alabaster. The old quartermaster, who was cunning the ship, and had perched himself on a carronade, with his arm leaning on the weather nettings, was equally motionless. The watch had all disappeared forward, or were stowed out of sight under the lee of the boats; the first Lieutenant, as if captivated by the serenity of the scene, was leaning with folded arms on the weather gangway, looking abroad upon the ocean, and whistling now and then either for a wind, or for want of thought. The only being who showed sign of life was the man at the wheel, and he scarcely moved, except now and then to give her a spoke or two, when the cheep of the tiller-rope, running through the well-greased leading blocks, would grate on the ear as a sound of some importance; while in daylight, in the ordinary bustle of the ship, no one could say he ever heard it.
Three bells!—“Keep a bright look-out there,” sung out the Lieutenant.
“Ay, ay, sir,” from the four look-out men, in a volley.
Then from the weather-gangway, “All’s well” rose shrill into the night air.
The watchword was echoed by the man on the forecastle, re-echoed by the lee-gangway look-out, and ending with the response of the man on the poop. My dream was dissipated—and so was the first lieutenant’s, who had but little poetry in his composition, honest man.
“Fine night, Mr Cringle. Look aloft, how beautifully set the sails are; that mizzen-topsail is well cut, eh? Sits well, don’t it? But confound the lubbers! Boatswain’s mate, call the watch.”
Whi—whew, whi—whew, chirrup, chip, chip—the deck was alive in an instant, “as bees biz out wi” angry fyke.
“Where is the captain of the mizzen-top?” growled the man in authority.
“Here, sir.”
“Here, sir!—look at the weather-clew of the mizzen-topsail, sir, look at that sail, sir,—how many turns can you count in that clew, sir? Spring it, you no—sailor you—spring it, and set the sail again.”
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable all this appeared to me at the time I will remember; but the obnoxious turns were shaken out, and the sail set again so as to please even the fastidious eye of the Lieutenant, who, seeing nothing more to find fault with, addressed me once more.
“Have had no grub since morning, Mr Cringle; all the others are away in the prizes; you are as good as one of us now, only want the order to join, you know—so will you oblige me, and take charge of the deck, until I go below and change my clothes, and gobble a bit?”
“Unquestionably,—with much pleasure.”
He forthwith dived, and I walked aft a few steps towards where the old quartermaster was standing on the gun.
“How is her head, Quartermaster?”
“South-east and by south, sir. If the wind holds, we shall weather Morant Point, I think, sir.”
“Very like, very like.—What is that glancing backwards and forwards across the port-hole there, Quartermaster?”
“I told you so, Mafame,” said the man; “what are you skylarking about the mizen-chains for, man?—Come in, will you, come in.”
The Captain’s caution to his servant flashed on me.
“Come in, my man, and give my respects to the Captain, and tell him that I am quite well now; the fresh air has perfectly restored me.”
“I will, sir,” said Mafame, half ashamed at being detected in his office of inspector-general of my actions; but the Doctor, to whom he had been sent, having now got a leisure moment from his labour in the shambles, came up and made enquiries as to how I felt.
“Why, Doctor, I thought I was in for a fever half an hour ago, but it is quite gone off, or nearly so—there, feel my pulse.”—It was regular, and there was no particular heat of skin.
“Why, I don’t think there is much the matter with you. Mafame, tell the Captain so; but turn in and take some rest as soon as you can, and I will see you in the morning—and here,” feeling in his waistcoat pocket, “here are a couple of capers for you; take them now, will you?” (And he handed me two blue pills, which I the next moment chucked overboard, to cure some bilious dolphin of the liver complaint.) I promised to do so whenever the Lieutenant relieved the deck, which would, I made no question, be within half an hour.
“Very well, that will do—good-night. I am regularly done up myself,” quoth the Medico, as he descended to the gunroom.
At this time of night, the prizes were all in a cluster under our lee quarter, like small icebergs covered with snow, and carrying every rag they could set. The Gleam was a good way a-stern, as if to whip them in, and to take care that no stray piccaroon should make a dash at any of them. They slid noiselessly along like phantoms of the deep, every thing in the air and in the water was so still—I crossed to the lee side of the deck to look at them—The Wave, seeing some one on the hammock nettings, sheered close to, under the Firebrand’s lee quarter, and some one asked, “Do you want to speak us?” The man’s voice, reflected from the concave surface of the schooner’s mainsail, had a hollow, echoing sound, that startled me.
“I should know that voice,” said I to myself, “and the figure steering the schooner.”
The throbbing in my head and the dizzy feel, which had capsized my judgment in the cabin, again returned with increased violence—“It was no deception after all,” thought I, “no cheat of the senses—I now believe such things are.”
The same voice now called out, “Come away, Tom, come away,” no doubt to some other seaman on board the little vessel, but my heated fancy did not so construe it. The col real again overtook me, and I ejaculated, “God have mercy upon me a sinner!”
“Why don’t you come, Tom?” said the voice once more.
It was Obed’s. At this very instant of time, the Wave forged a-head into the Firebrand’s shadow, so that her sails, but a moment before white as wool in the bright moonbeams suffered a sudden eclipse, and became black as ink.
“His dark spirit is there,” said I, audibly, “and calls me—go I will, whatever may befall.”
I hailed the schooner, or rather I had only to speak, and that in a low tone, for she was now close under the counter “Send your boat, for since you call, I know I must come.”
A small canoe slid off her deck; two ship boys got into it, and pulled under the starboard mizzen-chains, which entirely concealed them, as they held on for a moment with a boat-hook in the dark shadow of the ship. This was done so silently, that neither the lookout on the poop, who was rather on the weather-side at the moment, nor the man at the lee gangway, who happened to be looking out forward, heard them, or saw me, as I slipped down unperceived.
“Pull back again, my lads; quick now, quick.”
In a moment, I was along-side, the next I was on deck, and in this short space a change had come over the spirit of my dream, for I now was again conscious that I was on board the Wave with a prize crew. My imagination had taken another direction.
“Now Mr——, I beg pardon, I forget your name,”—I had never heard it, “make more sail, and haul out from the fleet for Mancheoneal Bay; I have despatches for the admiral—So, crack on.”
The midshipman who was in charge of her never for an instant doubted but that all was right; sail was made, and as the light breeze was the very thing for the little Wave, she began to snorer through it like smoke. When she had shot a cable’s length a-head of the Firebrand, we kept away a point or two, so as to stand more in for the land, and, like most maniacs, I was inwardly exulting at the success of my manoeuvre, when we heard the corvette’s bell struck rapidly. Her maintop-sail was suddenly laid to the mast, whilst a loud voice echoed amongst the sails—“Any one see hi—in in the waist—anybody see him forward there?”
“No, sir, no.”
“After guard, fire, and let go the life—buoy—lower away the quarter boats—jolly-boat also.”
We saw the flash, and presently the small blue light of the buoy, blazing and disappearing, as it rose and fell on the waves, in the corvette’s wake, sailed away astern, sparkling fitfully, like an ignis fatuus. The cordage rattled through the davit blocks, as the boats dashed into the water—the splash of the oars was heard, and presently the twinkle of the life-buoy was lost in the lurid glare of the blue lights, held aloft in each boat, where the crews were standing up, looking like spectres by the ghastly blaze, and anxiously peering about for some sign of the drowning man.
“A man overboard,” was repeated from one to another of the prize crew.
“Sure enough,” said I.
“Shall we stand back, sir?” said the midshipman.
“To what purpose?—there are enough there without us—no, no; crack on, we can do no good—carry on, carry on!”
We did so, and I now found severe shooting pains, more racking than the sharpest rheumatism I had ever suffered, pervading my whole body. They increased until I suffered the most excruciating agony, as if my bones had been converted into red-hot tubes of iron, and the marrow in them had been dried up with fervent heat, and I was obliged to beg that a hammock might be spread on deck, on which I lay down, pleading great fatigue and want of sleep as my excuse.
My thirst was unquenchable; the more I drank, the hotter it became. My tongue, and mouth, and throat, were burning, as if molten lead had been poured down into my stomach, while the most violent retching came on every ten minutes. The prize crew, poor fellows, did all they could once or twice they seemed about standing back to the ship, but, “make sail, make sail,” was my only cry. They did so, and there I lay without any thing between me and the wet planks but a thin sailor’s blanket and the canvass of the hammock, through the livelong night, and with no covering but a damp boatcloak, raving at times during the hot fits, at others having my power of utterance frozen up during the cold ones. The men, once or twice, offered to carry me below, but the idea was horrible to me.
“No, no—not there—for heaven’s sake not there! If you do take me down, I am sure I shall see him, and the dead mate—No, no overboard rather, throw me overboard rather.”
Oh, what would I not have given for the luxury of a flood of tears!—But the fountains of mine eyes were dried up, and seared as with a red-hot iron—my skin was parched, and hot, hot, as if every pore had been hermetically sealed; there was a hell within me and about me as if the deck on which I lay had been steel at a white heat, and the gushing blood, as under the action of a force-pump, throbbed through my head, like it would have burst on my brain—and such a racking, splitting headache—no language can describe it, and yet ever and anon in the midst of this raging fire, this furnace at my heart, seven times heated, a sudden icy shivering chill would shake me, and pierce through and through me, even when the roasting fever was at the hottest.
At length the day broke on the long, long, moist, steamy night, and once more the sun rose to bless every thing but me. As the morning wore on, my torments increased with the heat, and I lay sweltering on deck, in a furious delirium, held down forcibly by two men, who were relieved by others every now and then, while I raved about Obed, and Paul, and the scenes I had witnessed on board during the chase, and in the attack. None of my rough but kind nurses expected I could have held on till nightfall; but shortly after sunset I became more collected, and, as I was afterwards told, whenever any little office was performed for me, whenever some drink was held to my lips, I would say to the gruff sunburnt, black-whiskered, square shouldered topman who might be my Ganymede for the occasion, “Thank you, Mary; Heaven bless your pale face, Mary; bless you, bless you!”
It seemed my fancy had shaken itself clear of the fearful objects that had so pertinaciously haunted me before, and occupying itself with pleasing recollections, had produced a corresponding cahn in the animal; but the poor fellow to whom I had expressed myself so endearingly, was, I learned, most awfully put out and dismayed. He twisted and turned his iron features into all manner of ludicrous combinations, under the laughter of his mates—“Now, Peter, may I be—but I would rather be shot at, than hear the poor young gentleman so quiz me in his madness.”
Then again—as I praised his lovely taper fingers—they were more like bunches of frosted carrots, dipped in a tar-bucket, with the tails snapt short off, where about an inch thick.
“My taper fingers—oh lord! Now, Peter, I can’t stomach this any longer, I’ll give you my grog for the next two days, if you will take my spell here—My taper fingers—murder!”
As the evening closed in we saw the high land of Jamaica, but it was the following afternoon before we were off the entrance of Mancheoneal Bay. All this period, although it must have been one of great physical suffering, has ever, to my ethereal part, remained a dead blank. The first thing I remember afterwards, was being carried ashore in the dark in a hammock slung on two oars, so as to form a sort of rude palanquin, and laid down at a short distance from the overseer’s house where my troubles had originally commenced. I soon became perfectly sensible and collected, but I was so weak I could not speak; after resting a little, the men again lifted me and proceeded. The door of the dining-hall, which was the back entrance into the overseer’s house, opened flush into the little garden through which we had come in—there were lights, and sounds of music, singing, and jovialty within. The farther end of the room, at the door of which I now rested, opened into the piazza, or open veranda, which crossed it at right angles, and constituted the front of the house, forming, with this apartment, a figure somewhat like the letter T. I stood at the foot of the letter, as it were, and as I looked towards the piazza, which was gaily lit up, I could see it was crowded with male and female negroes in their holyday apparel, with their wholesome clear brown-black skins, not blue-black as they appear in our cold country, and beautiful white teeth, and sparkling black eyes, amongst whom were several gumbie-men and flute-players, and John Canoes, as the negro Jack Pudding is called; the latter distinguishable by wearing white false faces, and enormous shocks of horsehair, fastened on to their woolly pates. Their character hovers somewhere between that of a harlequin and a clown, as they dance about, and thread through the negro groups, quizzing the women and slapping the men; and at Christmas time, the grand negro carnival, they don’t confine their practical jokes to their own colour, but take all manner of comical liberties with the whites equally with their fellow bondsmen.
The blackamoor visitors had suddenly, to all appearance, broken off their dancing, and were now clustered behind a rather remarkable group, who were seated at supper in the dining-room, near to where I stood, forming, as it were, the foreground in the scene. Mr Fyall himself was there, and a rosy-gilled, happy-looking man, who I thought I had seen before; this much I could discern, for the light fell strong on them, especially on the face of the latter, which shone like a star of the first magnitude, or a lighthouse in the red gleam—the usual family of the overseer, the book-keepers that is, and the worthy who had been the proximate cause of all my sufferings, the overseer himself, were there too, as if they had been sitting still at table where I saw them now, ever since I left them three weeks before—at least my fancy did me the favour to annihilate, for the nonce, all intermediate time between the point of my departure on the night of the cooper’s funeral, and the moment when I now revisited them.
I was lifted out of the hammock, and supported to the door between two seamen. The fresh, nice-looking man before mentioned, Aaron Bang, Esquire, by name, an incipient planting attorney in the neighbourhood, of great promise, was in the act of singing a song, for it was during some holyday-time, which had broken down the stiff observances of a Jamaica planter’s life. There he sat, lolling back on his chair, with his feet upon the table, and a cigar, half consumed, in his hand. He had twisted up his mouth and mirth-provoking nose, which, by an unaccountable control over some muscle, present in the visage of no other human being, he made to describe a small circle round the centre of his face, and slewing his head on one side, he was warbling, ore Yotundo, some melodious ditty, with infinite complacency, and, to all appearance, to the great delight of his auditory, when his eyes lighted on me,—he was petrified in a moment, I seemed to have blasted him,——his warbling ceased instantaneously, the colour faded from his cheeks, but there he sat, with open mouth, and in the same attitude as if he still sung, and I had suddenly become deaf, or as if he and his immediate compotators, and the group of blackies beyond, had all been on the instant turned to stone by a slap from one of their own John Canoes. I must have been in truth a terrible spectacle; my skin was yellow, not as saffron, but as the skin of a ripe lime; the white of my eyes, to use an Irishism, ditto; my mouth and lips had festered and broke out, as we say in Scotland; my head was bound round with a napkin—none of the cleanest, you may swear; my dress was a pair of dirty duck trowsers, and my shirt, with the boat-cloak that had been my only counterpane on board of the little vessel, hanging from my shoulders.
Lazarus himself could scarcely have been a more appalling object, when the voice of him who spoke as never man spake, said, “Lazarus come forth.”
I made an unavailing attempt to cross the threshold, but could not. I was spellbound, or there was an invisible barrier erected against me, which I could not overleap. The buzzing in my ears, the pain and throbbing in my head, and racking aches, once more bent me to the earth, ill and reduced as I was, a relapse, thought I; and I felt my judgment once more giving way before the sweltering fiend, who had retreated but for a moment to renew his attacks with still greater fierceness. The moment he once more entered into me—the instant that I was possessed—I cannot call it by any other name—an unnatural strength pervaded my shrunken muscles and emaciated frame, and I stepped boldly into the hall. While I had stood at the door, listless and feeble as a child, hanging on the arms of the two topmen, after they had raised me from the hammock, the whole party had sat silently gazing at me, with their faculties paralysed with terror. But now, when I stumped into the room like the marble statue in Don Juan, and glared on them, my eyes sparkling with unearthly brilliancy under the fierce distemper which had anew thrust its red hot fingers into my maw, and was at the moment seething my brain in its hellish caldron, the negroes in the piazza, one and all, men, women, and children, evanished into the night, and the whole party in the foreground started to their legs, as if they had been suddenly galvanized; the table and chairs were overset, and whites and blacks trundled, and scrambled, and bundled over and over each other, neck and crop, as if the very devil had come to invite them to dinner in propria personal horns, tail, and all.
“Duppy come! Duppy come! Massa Tom Cringle ghost stand at for we door; we all shall dead, oh—we all shall go dead, oh!” bellowed the father of gods, my old ally Jupiter.
“Guid guide us, that’s an awful sicht!” quod the Scotch bookkeeper.
“By the hockeytt speak if you be a ghost, or I’ll exercise [exorcise] ye wid this butt of a musket,” quoth the cowboy@an Irishman to be sure, whose round bullet head was discernible in the human mass, by his black, twinkling, half-drunken-looking eyes.
“Well-a-day,” groaned another of them, a Welshman, I believe, with a face as long as my arm, and a drawl worthy of a Methodist parson; “and what can it be-flesh and blood, it is not—can these dry bones live?”
Ill as I was, however, I could perceive that all this row had now more of a tipsy frolic in it—whatever it might have had at first—than absolute fear; for the red-faced visitor, and Mr Fyall, as if half ashamed, speedily extricated themselves from the chaos of chairs and living creatures, righted the table, replaced the candles, and having sat down, looking as grave as judges on the bench, Aaron Bang exclaimed—“I’ll bet a dozen, it is the poor fellow himself returned on our hands, half-dead from the rascally treatment he has met with at the hands of these smuggling thieves!”
“Smugglers, or no,” said Fyall, “you are right for once, my peony rose, I do believe.”
But Aaron was a leetle staggered, notwithstanding, when I stumped towards him, as already described, and he shifted back and back as I advanced, with a most laughable cast of countenance, between jest and earnest, while Fyall kept shouting to him—“If it be his ghost, try him in Latin, Mr Bang—speak Latin to him, Aaron Bang—nothing for a ghost like Latin, it is their mother tongue.”
Bang, who, it seemed, plumed himself on his erudition, forthwith began “Quae maribus solum tribuunter.” Aaron’s conceit of exorcising a spirit with the fag-end of an old grammar rule would have tickled me under most circumstances; but I was far past laughing. I had more need, God help me, to pray. I made another step. He hitched his chair back. “Bam, Bo, Rem!” shouted the incipient planting attorney. Another hitch, which carried him clean out of the supper-room, and across the narrow piazza; but, in this last movement, he made a regular false step, the two back feet of his chair dropping over the first step of the front stairs, whereupon he lost his balance, and toppling over, vanished in a twinkling, and rolled down half-a-dozen steps, heels over head, until he lay sprawling on the manger or mule-trough before the door, where the Ceases are fed under busha’s own eye on all estates—for this excellent and most cogent reason, that otherwise the maize or guinea-com, belonging of right to poor mulo, would generally go towards improving the condition, not of the quadruped, but of the biped quashiet who had charge of him—and there he lay in a convulsion of laughter.
The two seamen, who supported me between them, were at first so completely dumfoundered by all this, that they could not speak. At length, however, Timothy Tailtackle lost his patience, and found his tongue.
“This may be Jamaica frolic, good gentlemen, and all very comical in its way; but, d——n me, if it be either gentlemanlike or Christian like, to be after funning and fuddling, while a fellow creature, and his Majesty’s commissioned officer to boot, stands before you, all but dead of one of your blasted fevers.”
The honest fellow’s straightforward appeal, far from giving offence to the kindhearted people to whom it was made, was not only taken in good part, but Mr Fyall himself took the lead in setting the whole household immediately to work, to have me properly cared for. The best room in the house was given up to me. I was carefully shifted and put to bed; but during all that night and the following day, I was raving in a furious fever, so that I had to be forcibly held down in my bed, sometimes for half an hour at a time.
I say, messmate, have you ever had the yellow fever, the vomito prieto, black vomit, as the Spaniards call it?—No?—have you ever had a bad bilious fever then? No bad bilious fever either?—Why, then, you are a most unfortunate creature; for you have never known what it was to be in Heaven, nor eke the other place. Oh the delight, the blessedness of the languor of recovery, when one finds himself in a large airy room, with a dreamy indistinct recollection of great past suffering, endured in a small miserable vessel within the tropics, where you have been roasted one moment by the vertical rays of the sun, and the next annealed hissing hot by the salt sea spray;—in a broad luxurious bed, some cool sunny morning, with the fresh sea breeze whistling through the open windows that look into the piazza, and rustling the folds of the clean wire gauze musquitto net that serves you for bed-curtains; while beyond you look forth into the sequestered court-yard, overshadowed by one vast umbrageous kennip tree, that makes every thing look green and cool and fresh beneath, and whose branches the rushing wind is rasping cheerily on the shingles of the roof-and oh, how passing sweet is the lullaby from the humming of numberless glancing bright-hued flies, of all sorts and sizes, sparkling among the green leaves like chips of a prism, and the fitful whirring of the fairy-flitting humming bird, now here, now there, like winged gems, or living atoms of the rainbow, round which their tiny wings, moving too quickly to be visible, form little haloes—and the palm tree at the house-corner is shaking its long hard leaves, making a sound for all the world like the pattering of rain; and the orange-tree top, with ripe fruit, and green fruit, and white blossoms, is waving to and fro flush with the window-sill, dashing the fragrant odour into your room at every whish; and the double Jessamine is twining up the papaw (whose fruit, if rubbed on a bull’s hide, immediately converts it into a tender beef-steak) and absolutely stifling you with sweet perfume; and then the sangaree old Madeira, two parts of water, no more, and nutmeg and not a taste out of a thimble, but a rummerful of it, my boy, that would drown your first-born at his christening, if he slipped into it, and no stinting in the use of this ocean; on the contrary, the tidy old brown nurse, or mayhap a buxom young one, at your bedside, with ever and anon a lettle more panada, (d——n panada, I had forgotten that!) “and den some more sangaree; it will do massa good, strengthen him tomack”—and, but I am out of breath, and must lie to for a brief space.
I opened my eyes late in the morning of the second day after landing, and saw Mr Fyall and the excellent Aaron Bang sitting one on each side of my bed. Although weak as a sucking infant, I had a strong persuasion on my mind that all danger was over, and that I was convalescent. I had no feverish symptom whatsoever, but felt cool and comfortable, with a fine balmy moisture on my skin; as yet, however, I spoke with great difficulty.
Aaron noticed this.
“Don’t exert yourself too much, Tom; take it coolly, man, and thank God that you are now fairly round the corner. Is your head painful?”
“No—why should it?”
Mr Fyall smiled, and I put up my hand—it was all I could do, for my limbs appeared loaded with lead at the extremities, and when I touched any part of my frame, with my hand for instance, there was no concurring sensation conveyed by the nerves of the two parts; sometimes I felt as if touched by the hand of another; at others, as if I had touched the person of some one else. When I raised my hand to my forehead, my fingers instinctively moved to take hold of my hair, for I was in no small degree proud of some luxuriant brown curls, which the women used to praise. Alas and alack-a-day! in place of ringlets, glossy with Macassar oil, I found a cool young tender plantain-leaf bound round my temples.
“What is all this?” said I. “A kale-blade, where my hair used to be!”
“How came this kale-blade here, And how came it here?”
Sung friend Bang, laughing, for he had great powers of laughter, and I saw he kept his quizzical face turned towards some object at the head of the bed, which I could not see.
“You may say that, Aaron—where’s my wig, you rogue, eh?”
“Never mind, Tom,” said Fyall, “your hair will soon grow again, won’t it, miss?”
“Miss! miss!” and I screwed my neck round, and lo!—“Ah, Mary, and are you the Delilah who have shorn my locks—you wicked young female lady you!”
She smiled and nodded to Aaron, who was a deuced favourite with the ladies, black, brown, and white, (I give the pas to the staple of the country—hope no offence,) as well as with every one else who ever knew him.
“How dare you, friend Bang, shave and blister my head, you dog?” said I. “You cannibal Indian, you have scalped me; you are a regular Mohawk.”
“Never mind, Tom—never mind, my boy,” said he. “Ay, you may blush, Mary Palma. Cringle there will fight, but he will have ‘Palmam qui meruit ferat’ for his motto yet, take my word for it.”
The sight of my cousin’s lovely face, and the heavenly music of her tongue, made me so forgiving, that I could be angry with no one.—At this moment a nice-looking elderly man slid into the room as noiselessly as a cat.
“How are you, Lieutenant? Why, you are positively gay this morning! Preserve me!—why have you taken off the dressing from your head?”
“Preserve me—you may say that, Doctor—why, you seem to have preserved me, and pickled me after a very remarkable fashion, certainly! Why, man, do you intend to make a mummy of me, with all your swaddlings? Now, what is that crackling on my chest? More plantain-leaves, as I live!”
“Only another blister, sir.”
“Only another blister—and my feet—Zounds! what have you been doing with my feet? The soles are as tender as if I had been bastinadoed.”
“Only cataplasms, sir; mustard and bird-pepper poultices nothing more.”
“Mustard and bird-pepper poultices!—and pray, what is that long fiddle case supported on two chairs in the piazza!”
“What case?” said the good Doctor, and his eye followed mine. “Oh, my gun-case. I am a great sportsman, you must know—but draw down that blind, Mr Bang, if you please, the breeze is too strong.”
“Gun-case! I would rather have taken it for your game-box, Doctor. However, thanks be to Heaven, you have not bagged me this bout.”
At this moment, I heard a violent scratching and jumping on the roof of the house, and presently a loud croak, and a strong rushing noise, as of a large bird taking flight—“What is that, Doctor?”
“The devil,” said he, laughing, “at least your evil genius, Lieutenant, it is the carrion crows, the large John—Crows, as they are called, flying away. They have been holding a council of war upon you since early dawn, expecting (I may tell you, now you are so well) that it might likely soon turn into a coroner’s inquest.”
“John—Crow!—Coroner’s inquest!—Cool shavers those West India chaps, after all!” muttered I; and again I lay back, and offered up my heart, warm thanks to the Almighty, for his great mercy to me a sinner.
My aunt and cousin had been on a visit in the neighbourhood, and overnight Mr Fyall had kindly sent for them to receive my last sigh, for to all appearance I was fast going. Oh, the gratitude of my heart, the tears of joy I wept in my weak blessedness, and the overflowing of heart that I experienced towards that almighty and ever-merciful Being who had spared me, and brought me out of my great sickness, to look round on dear friends, and on the idol of my heart, once more, after all my grievous sufferings! I took Mary’s hand—I could not raise it for lack of strength, or I would have kissed it; but, as she leant over me, Fyall came behind her and gently pressed her sweet lips to mine, while the dear girl blushed as red as Aaron Bang’s face. By this my aunt herself had come into the room, and a warm congratulations, and last, although not least, Timothy Tailtackle made his appearance in the piazza at the window, with a clean, joyful, well shaven countenance. He grinned, turned his quid, pulled up his trowsers, smoothed down his hair with his hand, and gave a sort of half-tipsy shamble, meant for a bow, as he entered the bedroom.
“You have forereached on Davy this time, sir. Heaven be praised for it! He was close aboard of you, howsomdever, sir, once or twice.” Then he bowed round the room again, with a sort of swing or caper, whichever you choose to call it, as if he had been the party obliged. “Kind folk, these, sir,” he continued, in what was meant for sotto voce, and for my ear alone, but it was more like the growling of a mastiff puppy than any thing else. “Kind folk, sir—bad as their mountebanking looked the first night, sir—why, Lord bless your honour, may they make a marine of me, if they han’t set a Bungo to wait on us, Bill and I, that is—and we has grog more than does us good—and grub, my eye!—only think, sir—Bill and Timothy Tailtackle waited on by a black Bungo!” and he doubled himself up, chuckling and hugging himself, with infinite glee.
“All now went merry as a marriage bell.” I was carefully conveyed to Kingston, where I rallied under my aunt’s hospitable roof, as rapidly almost as I had sickened, and within a fortnight, all bypast strangeness explained to my superiors, I at length occupied my berth in the Firebrand’s gunroom, as third lieutenant of the ship.