“Please, Massa Captain, can you spare me any muskets?”
“Any muskets?” said I; “why, half a dozen if you choose.”
“De wery number my massa told me to hax for. Tank you, Massa Captain.” And forthwith he and the other two black servants in attendance on Wagtail and Gelid, each seized his two muskets out of the arm-chest, with the corresponding ammunition, and, like so many sable Robinson Crusoes, were stumping aft, when I again accosted the aforesaid Pegtop.
“I say, my man, now since you have got the muskets, does your master really intend to fight?” The negro stopped short, and faced right round, his countenance expressing very great surprise and wonderment. “Massa Bang fight? Massa Aaron Bang fight?” and he looked up in my face with the most seriocomic expression that could be imagined. “Ah, massa,” continued the poor fellow,—“you is joking—surely you is joking—my Massa Aaron Bang fight? Oh, massa, surely you can’t know he—surely you never see him shoot snipe, and wild-duck—oh dear, why him kill wild duck on de wing—ah, me often see him knock down teal wid single ball, one hundred—ah, one hundred and fifty yards—and man surely more big mark den teal?”
“Granted,” I said; “but a teal has not a loaded musket in its claws, a Spanish buccaneer may have a small difference, Master Pegtop, that?”
“None at all, master,” chimed in Pegtop, “very energetically myshef, Gabriel Pegtop, Christian man as me is, am one of de Falmouth black shot. Ah, I have been in de woods wid Massa Aaron, one time particular, when dem wery debils, Sambo Moses, Corromantee Tom, and Eboe Peter, took to de bush, at Crabyaw estate—after breakfast—ten black shot me was one, go out along wid our good massa, Massa Aaron. Oh Lord, we walk troo de cool wood, and over de hot cleared ground, six hour, when every body say,—No use dis, Massa Bang—all we tired too much—must stop here—kindle fire—cook wittal. Ah, top dem who hab white liver, said Massa Aaron; you, Pegtop, take you fusee and cutlass, and follow me, my shild—Massa Aaron alway call me him shild, and troo enough, as parson Calaloo say, him family wery much like Joseph coat—many colour among dem, massa—though none quite so deep as mine eider”—and here the negro grinned at his own jest. “Well, I was follow him, or rader was go before him, opening up de pass wid me cutlass, troo de wery tangle underwood. We walk four hour—see no one, all still and quiet—no breeze shake de tree—oh, I sweat too much—dem hot, massa, sun shine right down, when we could catch glimpse of him—yet no trace of de runaways. At length, on turning corner, perched on small platform of rock, overshadowed by plumes of bamboos, like ostrich feather lady wear at de ball, who shall we see but dem wery dividual d——rascail I was mention, standing all tree, each wid one carabine pointed at us, at him shoulder, and cutlass at him side? Pegtop, my boy, said Massa Aaron, we is in for it—follow me, but don’t fire. So him pick off Sambo Moses—oh! cool as one cucumber. Now, say he, man to man,—and wid dat him tro him gun on de ground, and drawing him cutlass, we push up—in one moment him and Corromantee Tom close. Tom put up him hand to fend him head whip—ah—massa cutlass shred de hand at de wrist, like one carrot down Tom go—atop of him jump Massa Aaron. I master de leetle one, Eboe Peter, and we carry dem both prisoners into Falmouth.—Massa Aaron fight? Ah, massa, no hax dat question again.”
“Well, but will Mr Gelid fight?” said I.
“I tink him will too—great friend of Massa Bang—good duck—shot too oh yes, fink Massa Paul will fight.”
“Why,” said I, “your friends are all heroes, Pegtop—will Mr Wagtail fight also?” He stole close up to me, and exchanged his smart Creole gibberish for a quiet sedate accent, as he whispered.
“Not so sure of he—nice little fat man, but too fond of him belly. When I wait behind Massa Aaron chair, Pegtop sometime hear funny ting. One gentleman say—Ah, dat month we hear Lord Wellington take Saint Sebastian—when dat is, what time we hear dat news, Massa Wagtail? him say.—Eh, say Massa Wagtail—oh, we hear of dem news, dat wery day de first of de ringtail pigeon come to market. Den again, Dat big fight dem had at soch anoder place, when we hear of dat, Massa Wagtail?—say somebody else. Oh, oh, de wery day we hab dat beautiful grouper wid claret sauce at Massa Whiffie’s. Oh, make me laugh to hear white gentleman mark great fight in him memory by what him eat de day de news come; so, Massa Captain Cringle, me no quite sure weder Massa Wagtail will fight or no.”
So saying, Pegtop, Chew Chew, and Yampea, each shouldered two muskets apiece, and betook themselves to the after part of the schooner, where they forthwith set themselves to scour, and oil, and clean the same, in a most skilful manner. I expected the breeze would have freshened as the day broke, but I was disappointed; it fell, towards six o’clock, nearly calm. Come, thought I, we may as well go to breakfast; and my guests and I forthwith sat down to our morning meal. Soon after, the wind died away altogether—and “out sweeps” was the word; but I soon saw we had no chance with the chase at this game, and as to attacking him with the boats, it was entirely out of the question; neither could I, in the prospect of a battle, afford to murder the people, by pulling all day under a roasting sun, against one who could man his sweeps with relays of slaves, without one of his crew putting a finger to them; so I reluctantly laid them in, and there I stood looking at him the whole forenoon, as he gradually drew ahead of us. At length I piped to dinner, and the men having finished theirs, were again on deck; but the calm still continued; and seeing no chance of it freshening, about four in the afternoon we sat down to ours in the cabin. There was little said; my friends, although brave and resolute men, were naturally happy to see the brig creeping away from us, as fighting could only bring them danger; and my own feelings were of that mixed quality, that while I determined to do all I could to bring him to action, it would not have broken my heart had he escaped. We had scarcely finished dinner, however, when the rushing of the water past the run of the little vessel, and the steadiness with which she skimmed along, shewed that the light air had freshened.
Presently Tailtackle came down. “The breeze has set down, sir; the strange sail has got it strong to windward, and brings it along with him cheerily.”
“Beat to quarters, then, Tailtackle; all hands stand by to shorten sail. How is she standing?”
“Right down for us, sir.”
I went on deck, and there was the Guineaman about two miles to windward, evidently cleared for action, with her decks crowded with men, bowling along steadily under her single-reefed topsails.
I saw all clear. Wagtail and Gelid had followed me on deck, and were now busy with their black servants inspecting the muskets. But Bang still remained in the cabin. I went down. He was gobbling his last plantain, and forking up along with it most respectable slices of cheese, when I entered.
I had seen before I left the deck that an action was now unavoidable, and judging from the disparity of force, I had my own doubts as to the issue. I need scarcely say that I was greatly excited. It was my first command: My future standing in the service depended on my conduct now, and, God help me, I was all this while a mere lad, not more than twenty one years old. A strange indescribable feeling had come over me, and an irresistible desire to disburden my mind to the excellent man before me. I sat down.
“Hey day,” quoth Bang, as he laid down his coffee cup; “why, Tom, what ails you? You look deuced pale, my boy.”
“Up all night, sir, and bothered all day,” said I; “wearied enough, I can tell you.”
I felt a strong tremor pervade my whole frame at this moment; and I was impelled to speak by some unknown impulse, which I could not account for nor analyze.
“Mr Bang, you are the only friend whom I could count on in these countries; you know all about me and mine, and, I believe, would willingly do a kind action to my father’s son.”
“What are you at, Tom, my dear boy? come to the point, man.”
“I will. I am distressed beyond measure at having led you and your excellent friends, Wagtail and Gelid, into this danger; but I could not help it, and I have satisfied my conscience on that point; so I have only to entreat that you will stay below, and not unnecessarily expose yourselves. And if I should fall—may I take this liberty, my dear sir,” and I involuntarily took his hand,—“if I should fall, and I doubt if I shall ever see the sun set again, as we are fearfully overmatched” Bang struck in.
“Why, if our friend be too big—why not be off then? Pull foot, man, eh?—Havannah under your lee?”
“A thousand reasons against it, my dear sir. I am a young man and a young officer, my character is to make in the service—No, no, it is impossible—an older and more tried hand might have bore up, but I must fight it out. If any stray shot carries me off, my dear sir, will you take”—Mary, I would have said, but I could not pronounce her name for the soul of me—“will you take charge of her miniature, and say I died as I have”—a choking lump rose in my throat, and I could not proceed for a second; “and will you send my writing desk to my poor mother, there are letters in”—the lump grew bigger, the hot tears streamed from my eyes in torrents. I trembled like an aspen leaf, and grasping my excellent friend’s hand more firmly, I sunk down on my knees in a passion of tears, and wept like a woman, and fervently prayed to that great God, in whose almighty hand I stood, that I might that day do my duty as an English seaman. Bang knelt by me. Presently the passion was quelled. I rose, and so did he.
“Before you, my dear sir, I am not ashamed to have....”
“Don’t mention it my good boy—don’t mention it; neither of us, as the old general said, will fight a bit the worse.”
I looked at him. “Do you then mean to fight?” said I.
“To be sure I do—why not? I have no wife,”—he did not say he had no children—“Fight? To be sure I do.”
“Another gun, sir,” said Tailtackle, through the open skylight. Now all was bustle, and we hastened on deck. Our antagonist was a large brig, three hundred tons at the least, a long low vessel, painted black, out and in, and her sides round as an apple, with immensely square yards. She was apparently full of men. The sun was getting low, and she was coming down fast on us, on the verge of the dark blue water of the sea breeze. I could make out ten ports and nine guns of a side. I inwardly prayed they might not be long ones, but I was not a little startled to see through the glass that there were crowds of naked negroes at quarters, and on the forecastle and poop. That she was a contraband Guineaman, I had already made up my mind to believe; and that she had some fifty hands of a crew, I also considered likely; but that her captain should have resorted to such a perilous measure, perilous to themselves as well as to us, as arming the captive slaves, was quite unexpected, and not a little alarming, as it evinced his determination to make the most desperate resistance.
Tailtackle was standing beside me at this time, with his jacket off, his cutlass girded on his thigh, and the belt drawn very tight. All the rest of the crew were armed in a similar fashion; the small-arm-men with muskets in their hands, and the rest at quarters at the guns; while the pikes were cast loose from the spars round which they had been stopped, with tubs of wadding, and boxes of grape, all ready ranged, and every thing clear for action.
“Mr Tailtackle” said I, “you are gunner here, and should be in the magazine. Cast off that cutlass; it is not your province to lead the boarders.” The poor fellow blushed, having, in the excitement of the moment, forgotten that he was any thing more than captain of the Firebrand’s maintop.
“Mr Timotheus,” said Bang, “have you one of these bodkins to spare?”
Timothy laughed. “Certainly, sir; but you don’t mean to head the boarders, sir—do you?”
“Who knows, now since I have learned to walk on this dancing cork of a craft?” rejoined Aaron, with a grim smile, while he pulled off his coat, braced on his cutlass, and tied a large red cotton shawl round his head. He then took off his neckerchief and fastened it round his waist, as tight as he could draw.
“Strange that all men in peril—on the uneasiness, like,” said he, “should always gird themselves as tightly as they can.”
The slaver was now within musket-shot, when he put his helm to port, with the view of passing under our stem. To prevent being raked, we had to luff up sharp in the wind, and fire a broadside. I noticed the white splinters glance from his black wales; and once more the same sharp yell rung in our ears, followed by the long melancholy howl, already described.
“We have pinned some of the poor blacks again,” said Tailtackle, who still lingered on the deck; small space for remark, for the slaver again fired his broadside at us, with the same cool precision as before.
“Down with the helm, and let her come round,” said I; “that will do master, run across his stern—Out sweeps forward, and keep her there get the other carronade over to leeward—that is it—now, blaze away while he is becalmed—fire, small-arm-men, and take good aim.”
We were now right across his stern, with his spanker boom within ten yards of us; and although he worked his two stem chasers with great determination, and poured whole showers of musketry from his rigging, and poop, and cabin-windows, yet, from the cleverness with which our sweeps were pulled, and the accuracy with which we were kept in our position, right athwart his stern, our fire, both from the cannon and musketry, the former loaded with round and grape, was telling, I could see, with fearful effect.
Crash—“There, my lads, down goes his main-topmast—pepper him well, while they are blinded and confused among the wreck. Fire away—there goes the peak, shot away cleverly, close by the throat. Don’t cease firing, although his flag be down—it was none of his doing. There, my lads, there he has it again; you have shot away the weather fore topsail sheet, and he cannot get from under you.”
Two men at this moment lay out on his larboard foreyard-arm, apparently with the intention of splicing the sheet, and getting the clew of the fore-topsail once more down to the yard; if they had succeeded in this, the vessel would again have fetched way, and drawn out from under our fire. Mr Bang and Paul Gelid had all this time been firing with murderous precision, from where they had ensconced themselves under the shelter of the larboard bulwark, close to the taffrail, with their three black servants in the cabin, loading the six muskets, and little Wagtail, who was no great shot, sitting on the deck, handing them up and down.
“Now, Mr Bang,” cried I, “for the love of Heaven”—and may Heaven forgive me for the ill-placed exclamation—“mark these two men—down with them?”
Bang turned towards me with all the coolness in the world “What, those chaps on the end of the long stick?”
“Yes—yes,” (I here spoke of the larboard foreyard-arm,) “yes, down with them.”
He lifted his piece as steadily as if he had really been duck shooting.
“I say, Gelid, my lad, take you the innermost.”
“Ah!” quoth Paul. They fired—and down dropped both men, and squattered for a moment in the water, like wounded waterfowl, and then sank for ever, leaving two small puddles of blood on the surface.
“Now, master,” shouted I, “put the helm up and lay him alongside—there stand by with the grapplings—one round the backstay the other through the chainplate there—so,—you have it.” As we ranged under his counter “Mainchains are your chance, men—boarders, follow me.” And in the enthusiasm of the moment I jumped into the slaver’s main channel, followed by twenty-eight men. We were in the act of getting over the netting when the enemy rallied, and fired a volley of small arms, which sent four out of the twenty-eight to their account, and wounded three more. We gained the quarterdeck, where the Spanish captain, and about forty of his crew, shewed a determined front, cutlass and pistol in hand we charged them—they stood their ground. Tailtackle (who, the moment he heard the boarders called, had jumped out of the magazine, and followed me) at a blow clove the Spanish captain to the chine; the lieutenant, or second in command, was my bird, and I had disabled him by a sabre-cut on the sword-arm, when he drew his pistol, and shot me through the left shoulder. I felt no pain, but a sharp pinch, and then a cold sensation, as if water had been poured down my neck.
Jigmaree was close by me with a boarding-pike, and our fellows were fighting with all the gallantry inherent in British sailors. For a moment the battle was poised in equal scales. At length our antagonists gave way, when about fifteen of the slaves, naked barbarians, who had been ranged with muskets in their hands on the forecastle, suddenly jumped down into the waist with a yell, and came to the rescue of the Spanish part of the crew.
I thought we were lost. Our people, all but Tailtackle, poor Handlead, and Jigmaree, held back. The Spaniards rallied, and fought with renewed courage, and it was now, not for glory, but for dear life, as all retreat was cut off by the parting of the grapplings and warps, that had lashed the schooner alongside of the slaver, for the Wave had by this time forged a-head, and lay across the brig’s bows, in place of being on her quarter, with her foremast jammed against the slaver’s bowsprit, whose spritsail-yard crossed our deck between the masts. We could not therefore retreat to our own vessel if we had wished it, as the Spaniards had possession of the waist and forecastle; all at once, however, a discharge of round and grape crashed through the bridleport of the brig, and swept off three of the black auxiliaries before mentioned, and wounded as many more, and the next moment an unexpected ally appeared on the field. When we boarded, the Wave had been left with only Peter Mangrove; the five dockyard negroes; Pearl, one of the Captain’s gigs, the handsome black already introduced on the scene; poor little Reefpoint, who, as already stated, was badly hurt; Aaron Bang, Paul Gelid, and Wagtail. But this Pearl without price, at the very moment of time when I thought the game was up, jumped on deck through the bowport, cutlass in hand, followed by the five black carpenters and Peter Mangrove, after whom appeared no less a personage than Aaron Bang himself and the three blackamoor valets, armed with boarding-pikes. Bang flourished his cutlass for an instant.
“Now, Pearl, my darling, shout to them in Coromantee—shout;” and forthwith the black quartermaster sung out, “Coromantee Sheik Cocoloo, kockemony populorum fiz;” which, as I afterwards learned, being interpreted, is, “Behold the Sultan Cocoloo, the great ostrich, with a feather in his tail like a palm branch; fight for him, you sons of female dogs.” In an instant the black Spanish auxiliaries sided with Pearl, and Bang, and the negroes, and joined in charging the white Spaniards, who were speedily driven down the main hatchway, leaving one half of their number dead, or badly wounded, on the blood slippery deck. But they still made a desperate defence, by firing up the hatchway. I hailed them to surrender.
“Zounds,” cried Jigmaree, “there’s the clink of hammers they are knocking off the fetters of the slaves.”
“If you let the blacks loose,” I sung out in Spanish, “by the Heaven above us, I will blow you up, although I should go with you! Hold your hands, Spaniards! Mind what you do, madmen!”
“On with the hatches, men,” shouted Tailtackle.
They had been thrown overboard, or put out of the way, they could nowhere be seen. The firing from below continued.
“Cast loose that carronade there; clap in a canister of grape, so now run it forward, and fire down the hatchway.” It was done, and taking effect amongst the pent-up slaves, such a yell arose—oh God! oh God!—I never can forget it. Still the maniacs continued firing up the hatchway.
“Load and fire again.” My people were now furious, and fought more like incarnate fiends broke loose from hell than human beings.
“Run the gun up to the hatchway once more.” They ran the carronade so furiously forward, that the coaming, or ledge, was split off, and down went the gun, carriage and all, with a crash into the hold. Presently smoke appeared rising up the fore-hatchway.
“They have set fire to the brig; overboard!—regain the schooner, or we shall all be blown into the air like peels of onions!” sung out little Jigmaree.
But where was the Wave? She had broke away, and was now a cable’s length ahead, apparently fast leaving us, with Paul Gelid and Wagtail, and poor little Reefpoint, who, badly wounded as he was, had left his hammock, and come on deck in the emergency, making signs of their inability to cut away the halyards; and the tiller being shot away, the schooner had become utterly unmanageable.
“UP,—and let fall the foresail, men—down with the fore tack cheerily now—get way on the brig, and overhaul the Wave promptly, or we are lost,” cried I. It was done with all the coolness of desperate men. I took the helm, and presently we were once more alongside of our own vessel. Time we were so, for about one hundred and fifty of the slaves, whose shackles had been knocked off, now scrambled up the fore hatchway, and we had only time to jump overboard, when they made a rush aft; and no doubt, exhausted as we were, they would have massacred us on the spot, frantic and furious as they evidently were from the murderous fire of grape that had been directed down the hatchway.
But the fire was quicker than they. The smouldering smoke that was rising like a pillar of cloud from the fore hatchway, was now streaked with tongues of red flame, which, licking the masts and spars, ran up and caught the sails and rigging. In an instant, the fire spread to every part of the gear aloft, while the other element, the sea, was also striving for the mastery in the destruction of the doomed vessel; for our shot, or the fall of the carronade into the hold, had started some of the bottom planks, and she was fast settling down by the head. We could hear the water rushing in like a mill stream. The fire increased her guns went off as they became heated—she gave a sudden heel—and while five hundred human beings, pent up in her noisome hold, split the heavens with their piercing death-yells, down she went with a heavy lurch, head foremost, right in the wake of the setting sun, whose level rays made the thick dun wreaths that burst from her as she disappeared, glow with the hue of the amethyst; and while the whirling clouds, gilded by his dying radiance, curled up into the blue sky, in rolling masses, growing thinner and thinner, until they vanished away, even like the wreck whereout they arose,—and the circling eddies, created by her sinking, no longer sparkled and flashed in the red light—and the stilled waters where she had gone down, as if oil had been cast on them, were spread out like polished silver, shining like a mirror, while all around was dark blue ripple,—a puff of fat black smoke, denser than any we had yet seen, suddenly emerged with a loud gurgling noise, from out the deep bosom of the calmed sea, and rose like a balloon, rolling slowly upwards, until it reached a little way above our mastheads, where it melted and spread out into a dark pall, that overhung the scene of death, as if the incense of such a horrible and polluted sacrifice could not ascend into the pure heaven, but had been again crushed back upon our devoted heads, as a palpable manifestation of the wrath of Him who hath said—“Thou shalt not kill.”
For a few moments all was silent as the grave, and I felt as if the air had become too thick for breathing, while I looked up like another Cain.
Presently, about one hundred and fifty of the slaves, men, women, and children, who had been drawn down by the vortex, rose amidst numberless pieces of smoking wreck, to the surface of the sea; the strongest yelling like fiends in their despair, while the weaker, the women, and the helpless gasping little ones, were choking, and gurgling, and sinking all around. Yea, the small thin expiring cry of the innocent sucking infant tom from its sinking mother’s breast, as she held it for a brief moment above the waters, which had already for ever closed over herself, was there. But we could not perceive one single individual of her white crew; like desperate men, they had all gone down with the brig. We picked up about one half of the miserable Africans, and—my pen trembles as I write it—fell necessity compelled us to fire on the remainder, as it was utterly impossible for us to take them on board. Oh that I could erase such a scene for ever from my memory! One incident I cannot help relating. We had saved a woman, a handsome clear skinned girl, of about sixteen years of age. She was very faint when we got her in, and was lying with her head over a port—sill, when a strong athletic young negro swam to the part of the schooner where she was. She held down her hand to him; he was in the act of grasping it, when he was shot through the heart from above. She instantly jumped overboard, and, clasping him in her arms, they sank, and disappeared together. “Oh, woman, whatever may be the colour of your skin, your heart is of one only!” said Aaron.
Soon all was quiet; a wounded black here and there was shrieking in his great agony, and struggling for a moment before he sank into his watery grave for ever; a few pieces of wreck were floating and sparkling on the surface of the deep in the blood red sunbeams, which streamed in a flood of glorious light on the bloody deck, shattered hull, and torn rigging of the Wave, and on the dead bodies and mangled limbs of those who had fallen; while some heavy scattering drops of rain fell sparkling from a passing cloud, as if Nature had wept in pity over the dismal scene; or as if they had been blessed tears, shed by an angel, in his heavenward course, as he hovered for a moment, and looked down in pity on the fantastic tricks played by the worm of a day—by weak man, in his little moment of power and ferocity. I said something—ill and hastily. Aaron was close beside me, sitting on a carronade slide, while the surgeon was dressing a pike wound in his neck. He looked up solemnly in my face, and then pointed to the blessed luminary, that was now sinking in the sea, and blazing up into the resplendent heavens—“Cringle, for shame for shame—your impatience is blasphemous. Remember this morning and thank Him”—here he looked up and crossed himself—“thank Him who, while he has called poor Mr Handlead, and so many brave fellows to their last awful reckoning, has mercifully brought us to the end of this fearful day;—oh, thank Him, Tom, that you have seen the sun set once more!”
“I longed to see the Isles that gem,Old Ocean’s purple diadem,I sought by turns, and saw them all.”Byron, The Bride Of Abydos, II. 355—57.
The puncture in Mr Bang’s neck from the boarding-pike was not very deep, still it was an ugly lacerated wound; and if The had not to use his own phrase, been somewhat bullnecked, there is no saying what the consequences might have been.
“Tom, my boy,” said he, after the doctor was done with him, “I am nicely coopered now—nearly as good as new—a little stiffish or so lucky to have such a comfortable coating of muscle, otherwise the carotid would have been in danger. So come here, and take your turn, and I will hold the candle.”
It was dead calm, and as I had desired the cabin to be again used as a cockpit, it was at this time full of poor fellows, waiting to have their wounds dressed, whenever the surgeon could go below. The lantern was brought, and sitting down on a wadding tub, I stripped. The ball, which I knew had lodged in the fleshy part of my left shoulder, had first of all struck me right over the collar-bone, from which it had glanced, and then buried itself in the muscle of the arm, just below the skin, where it stood out, as if it had been a sloe both in shape and colour. The collar-bone was much shattered, and my chest was a good deal shaken, and greatly bruised; but I had perceived nothing of all this at the time I was shot; the sole perceptible sensation was the feeling of cold water running down, and the pinch in the shoulder, as already described. I was much surprised (every man who has been seriously hit being entitled to expatiate) with the extreme smallness of the puncture in the skin through which the ball had entered; you could not have forced a pea through it, and there was scarcely any flow of blood.
“A very simple affair this, sir,” said the surgeon, as he made a minute incision right over the ball, the instrument cutting into the cold dull lead with a cheep, and then pressing his fingers, one on each side of it, it jumped out nearly into Aaron’s mouth.
“A pretty sugar-plum, Tom—if that collar-bone of yours had not been all the harder, you would have been embalmed in a gazette, to use your own favourite expression. But, my good boy, your bruise on the chest is serious; you must go to bed, and take care of yourself.”
Alas! there was no bed for me to go to. The cabin was occupied by the wounded, where the surgeon was still at work. Out of our small crew, nine had been killed, and eleven wounded, counting passengers—twenty out of forty-two—a fearful proportion.
The night had now fallen.
“Pearl, send some of the people aft, and get a spare square-sail from the sailmaker, and....”
“Will the awning not do, sir?”
“To be sure it will,” said I—it did not occur to me. “Get the awning triced up to the stancheons, and tell my steward to get the beds on deck a few flags to shut us in will make the thing complete.”
It was done; and while the sharp cries of the wounded, who were immediately under the knife of the doctor, and the low moans of those whose wounds had been dressed, or were waiting their turn, reached our ears distinctly through the small skylight, our beds were arranged on deck, under the shelter of the awning, a curtain of flags veiling our quarters from the gaze of the crew. Paul Gelid and Pepperpot occupied the starboard side of the little vessel; Aaron Bang and myself the larboard. By this time it was close on eight o’clock in the evening. I had merely looked in on our friends, ensconced as they were in their temporary hurricane house; for I had more work than I could accomplish on deck in repairing damages. Most of our standing, and great part of our running rigging, had been shot away, which the tired crew were busied in splicing and knotting the best way they could. Our mainmast was very badly wounded close to the deck. It was fished as scientifically as our circumstances admitted. The foremast had fortunately escaped—it was untouched; but there were no fewer than thirteen round shot through our hull, five of them between wind and water.
When every thing had been done which ingenuity could devise, or the most determined perseverance execute, I returned to our canvass—shed aft, and found Mr Wagtail sitting on the deck, arranging, with the help of my steward, the supper equipment to the best of his ability. Our meal, as may easily be imagined, was frugal in le extreme—salt beef, biscuit, some roasted yams, and cold grog—some of Aaron’s excellent rum. But I mark it down, that I question if any one of the four who partook of it, ever made so hearty a supper before or since. We worked away at the junk until we had polished the bone, clean as an elephant’s tusk, and the roasted yams disappeared in bushelfuls; while the old rum sank in the bottle, like mercury in the barometer indicating an approaching gale.
“I say, Tom,” quoth Aaron, “how do you feel, my boy?”
“Why, not quite so buoyant as I could wish. To me it has been a day of fearful responsibility.”
“And well it may,” said he. “As for myself, I go to rest with the tremendous consciousness that even I, who am not a professional butcher, have this blessed day shed more than one fellow-creature’s blood-a trembling consideration-and all for what, Tom? You met a big ship in the dark, and desired her to stop. She said she would not—You said, ‘You shall.’—She rejoined, ‘I’ll be d——d if I do.’ And thereupon you set about compelling her; and certainly you have interrupted her course to some purpose, at the trivial cost of the lives of only five or six hundred human beings, whose hearts were beating cheerily in their bosoms within these last six hours, but whose bodies are now food for fishes.”
I was stung.
“At your hands, my dear sir, I did not expect this, and”
“Hush,” said he, “I don’t blame you—it is all right; but why will not the Government at home arrange by treaty that this nefarious trade should be entirely put down? Surely all our victories by sea and land might warrant our stipulating for so much, in place of huggermuggering with doubtful ill-defined treaties, specifying that you Johnny Crapeau, and you Jack Spaniard, shall steal men, and deal in human flesh, in such and such a degree of latitude only, while, if you pick up one single slave a league to the northward or southward of the prescribed line of coast, then we shall blow you out of the water wherever we meet you. Why should poor devils, who live in one degree of latitude, be allowed to be kidnapped, whilst we make it felony to steal their immediate neighbours?” Aaron waxed warm as he proceeded. “Why will not Englishmen lend a hand to put down the slave-trade amongst our opponents in sugar growing, before they so recklessly endeavour to crush slavery in our own worn-out colonies, utterly disregardless of our rights and lives? Mind, Tom, I don’t defend slavery, I sincerely wish we could do without it, but am I to be the only one to pay the piper in compassing its extinction? If, however, it really be that Upas-tree, under whose baleful shade every kindly feeling in the human bosom, whether of master or servant, withers and dies, I ask, who planted it? If it possess the magical, and incredible, and most pestilential quality, that the English gentleman, who shall be virtuous and beneficent, and just in all his ways, before he leaves home, and after he returns home, shall, during his temporary sojourn within its influence become a very Nero for cruelty, and have his warm heart of flesh smuggled out of his bosom, by some hocus pocus, utterly unintelligible to any unprejudiced rational being, or indurated into the flint of the nether millstone, or frozen into a lump of ice.”
“Lord!” ejaculated Wagtail, “only fancy a snowball in a man’s stomach, and in Jamaica too!”
“Hold your tongue, Waggy, my love,” continued Aaron; “if all this were so, I would again ask, who planted it?—say not that we did it—I am a planter, but I did not plant slavery. I found it growing and flourishing, and fostered by the Government, and made my home amongst the branches like a respectable corbie craw, or a pelican in a wild— duck’s nest, with all my pretty little tender black branchers hopping about me, along with numberless other unfortunates, and now find that the tree is being uprooted by the very hands that planted and nourished it, and seduced me to live in it, and all....”
I laughed aloud—“Come, come, my dear sir, you are a perfect Lord Castlereagh in the congruity of your figures. How the deuce can any living thing exist among the poisonous branches of the Upas-tree—or a wild-duck build....”
“Get along with your criticism, Tom—and don’t laugh, hang it, don’t laugh—but who told you that a corbie cannot?”
“Why there are no corbies in Java.”
“Pah—botheration—there are pelicans then; but you know it is not an Upas-tree, you know it is all a chimera, and, like the air-drawn dagger of Macbeth, ‘that there is no such thing.’ Now, that is a good burst, Gelid, my lad, a’nt it?” said Bang, as he drew a long breath, and again launched forth.
“Our Government shall quarrel about sixpence here or sixpence there of discriminative duty in a foreign port, while they have clapped a knife to our throats, and a flaming fagot to our houses, by absurd edicts and fanatical intermeddling with our own colonies, where the slave-trade has notoriously, and to their own conviction, entirely ceased; while, I say it again, they will not put out their little finger to prevent, nay, they calmly look on, and permit a traffic utterly repugnant to all the best feelings of our nature, and baneful to an incalculable degree to our own West Indian possessions; provided, forsooth, the slaves be stolen within certain limits, which, as no one can prove, naturally leads to this infernal contraband, the suppression of which—Lord, what a thing to think of!—has nearly deprived the world of the invaluable services of me, Aaron Bang, Esquire, Member of Council of the Island of Jamaica, and Custos Rotulorum Populorum Jig of the Parish of——”
“Lord,” said Wagtail, “why, the yam is not half done.”
“But the rum is—ah!” drawled Gelid.
“D——n the yam and the rum too,” rapped out Bang. “Why, you belly-gods, you have interrupted such a torrent of eloquence!”
I began to guess that our friends were waxing peppery. “Why, gentlemen, I don’t know how you feel, but I am regularly done up—it is quite calm, and I hope we shall all sleep, so good-night.”
We nestled in, and the sun had risen before I was called next morning. I hope “I rose a sadder and a wiser man. Upon that morrow’s morn.”
“On deck, there,” said I, while dressing. Mr Peter Swop, one of the Firebrand’s master-mates, and now, in consequence of poor Handlead’s death, acting-master of the Wave, popped in his head through the opening in the flags. “How is the weather, Mr Swop?”
“Calm all night, sir; not a breath stirring, sir.”
“Are the sails shifted?” said I, “and the starboard main-shrouds replaced?”
“They are not yet, sir; the sails are on deck, and the rigging is now stretching, and will be all ready to get over the masthead by breakfast time, sir.”
“How is her head?”
“Why,” rejoined Swop, “it has been boxing all round the compass, sir, for these last twelve hours; at present it is north-east.” “Have we drifted much since last night, Mr Swop?”
“No, sir—much where we were, sir,” rejoined the master. “There are several pieces of wreck, and three dead bodies floating close to, sir.”
By this time I was dressed, and had gone from under the awning on deck. The first thing I did was to glance my eye over the nettings, and there perceived on our quarter, three dead bodies, as Mr Swop had said, floating——one a white Spaniard, and the others the corpses of two unfortunate Africans, who had perished miserably when the brig went down. The white man’s remains, swollen as they were, from the heat of the climate, and sudden putrefaction consequent thereon, floated quietly within pistol-shot, motionless and still; but the bodies of the two negroes were nearly hidden by the clustering sea-birds which had perched on them. There were at least two dozen shipped on each carcass, busy with their beaks and claws, while, on the other hand, the water in the immediate neighbourhood seemed quite alive, from the rushing and walloping of numberless fishes, who were tearing the prey piecemeal. The view was any thing but pleasant, and I naturally turned my eyes forward to see what was going on in the bows of the schooner. I was startled from the number of black faces which I saw.
“Why, Mr Tailtackle, how many of these poor creatures have we on board?”
“There are fifty-nine, sir, under hatches in the fore-hold,” said Timothy, “and thirty-five on deck; but I hope we shan’t have them long, sir. It looks like a breeze to windward. We shall have it before long, sir.”
At this moment Mr Bang came on deck.
“Lord, Tom, I thought it was a flea-bite, last night, but, mercy, I am as stiff and sore as a gentleman need be. How do you feel? I see you have one of your fins in a sling—eh?”
“I am a little stiff, certainly; however, that will go off; but come forward here, my dear sir; come here, and look at this shot-hole—saw you ever anything like that?”
This was the smashing of one of our pumps from a round shot, the splinters from which were stuck into the bottom of the launch, which overhung it, forming really a figure very like the letter A.
“Don’t take it to myself, Tom—no, not at all.”
At this moment the black savages on the forecastle discovered our friend, and shouts of “Sheik Cocoloo” rent the skies. Mr Bang, for a moment, appeared startled, so far as I could judge, he had forgotten that part of his exploit, and did not know what to make of it, until at last the actual meaning seemed to flash on him, when, with a shout of laughter, he bolted in through the opening of the flags to his former quarters below the awning. I descended to the cabin, breakfast having been announced, and sat down to our meal, confronted by Paul Gelid and Pepperpot Wagtail. Presently we heard Aaron sing out, the small skuttle being right overhead, “Pegtop, come here, Pegtop, I say, help me on with my neckcloth—so—that will do; now I shall go on deck. Why, Pearl, my boy, what do you want?” and before Pearl could get a word in, Aaron continued, “I say, Pearl, go to the other end of the ship, and tell your Coromantee friends that it is all a humbug that I am not the Sultan Cocoloo; farther more, that I have not a feather in my tail like a palm branch, of the truth of which I offer to give them ocular proof.”
Pearl made his salaam. “Oh, sir, I fear that we must not say too much on that subject; we have not irons for one half of them savage negirs;” the fellow was as black as a coal himself; “and were they to be undeceived, why, reduced as our crew is, they might at any time rise on, and massacre the whole watch.”
“The devil!” we could hear friend Aaron say; “oh, then, go forward, and assure them that I am a bigger ostrich than ever, and I shall astonish them presently, take my word for it. Pegtop, come here, you scoundrel,” he continued; “I say, Pegtop, get me out my uniform coat,”—our friend was a captain of Jamaica militia—“so—and my sword—that will do—and here, pull off my trowsers it will be more classical to perambulate in my shirt, in case it really be necessary to persuade them that the palm branch was all a figure of speech. Now, my hat—there—walk before me, and fan me with the top of that herring barrel.”
This was a lid of one of the wadding-tubs, which, to come up to Jigmaree’s notions of neatness, had been fitted with covers, and forth stumped Bang, preceded by Pegtop doing the honours. But the instant he appeared from beneath the flags, the same wild shout arose from the captive slaves forward, and such of them as were not fettered, immediately began to bundle and tumble round our friend, rubbing their flat noses and woolly heads all over him, and taking hold of the hem of his garment, whereby his personal decency was so seriously periled, that, after an unavailing attempt to shake them off, he fairly bolted, and ran for shelter, once more, under the awning, amidst the suppressed mirth of the whole crew, Aaron himself laughing louder than any of them all the while. “I say, Tom, and fellow sufferers,” quoth he, after he had run to earth under the awning, and looking down the scuttle into the cabin where we were at breakfast, “how am I to get into the cabin? if I go out on the quarterdeck but one arm’s length, in order to reach the companion, these barbarians will be at me again. Ah, I see.”
Whereupon, without more ado, he stuck his legs down through the small hatch right over the breakfast table, with the intention of descending, and the first thing he accomplished, was to pop his foot into a large dish of scalding hominy, or hasty-pudding, made of Indian corn meal, with which Wagtail was in the habit of commencing his stowage at breakfast. But this proving too hot for comfort, he instantly drew it out, and in his attempt to reascend, he stuck his bespattered toe into Paul Gelid’s mouth. “Oh! oh!” exclaimed Paul, while little Wagtail lay back laughing like to die; but the next instant Bang gave another struggle, or wallop, like a pelloch in shoal-water, whereby Pepperpot borrowed a good kick on the side of the head, and down came the Great Ostrich, Aaron Bang, but without any feather in his tail, as I can avouch, slap upon the table, smashing cups and saucers, and hominy, and devil knows what all, to pieces, as he floundered on the board. This was so absurd, that we were all obliged to give uncontrolled course to our mirth for a minute or two, when, making the best of the wreck, we contrived to breakfast in tolerable comfort.
Soon after the meal was finished, a light air enabled us once more to lie our course, and we gradually crept to the northward, until twelve o’clock in the forenoon, after which time it fell calm again. I went down to the cabin; Bang had been overhauling my small library, when a shelf gave way (the whole affair having been injured by a round shot in the action, which had tom right through the cabin), so down came several scrolls, rolled up, and covered with brown paper.
“What are all these?” I could hear our friend say. “They are my logs,” said I.
“Your what?”
“My private journals.”
“Oh, I see,” said Aaron. “I will have a turn at them, with your permission. But what is this so carefully bound with red tape, and sealed, and marked—let me see, ‘Thomas Cringle, his log-book.’”
He looked at me.—“Why, my dear sir, to say the truth, that is my first attempt; full of trash, believe me;—what else could you expect, from so mere a lad as I was when I wrote it?”
“The child is father to the man, Tom, my boy; so may I peruse it; may I read it for the edification of my learned allies,—Pepperpot Wagtail, and Paul Gelid, esquires?”
“Certainly,” I replied, “no objection in the world, but you will laugh at me, I know; still, do as you please, only, had you not better have your wound dressed first?”
“My wound! Poo, poo! just enough to swear by—a flea-bite never mind it; so here goes”—and he read aloud what is detailed in the “Launching of the Log,” making his remarks with so much naivete, that I daresay the reader will be glad to hear a few of them. His anxiety, for instance, when he read of the young aide-de-camp being shot and dragged by the stirrup, to know “what became of the empty horse,” was very entertaining; and when he had read the description of Davoust’s face and person, where I describe his nose, as neither fine nor dumpy—a fair enough proboscis as noses go, he laid down the Log with the most laughable seriousness.
“Now,” quoth he, “very inexplicit all this, Tom. Why, I am most curious in noses. I judge of character altogether from the nose. I never lose sight of a man’s snout, albeit I never saw the tip of my own. You may rely on it, that it is all a mistake to consider the regular Roman nose, with a curve like a shoemaker’s paring knife, or the straight Grecian, with a thin transparent ridge, that you can see through, or the Deutsch meerschaum, or the Saxon pump-handle, or the Scotch mull, or any other nose, that can be taken hold of, as the standard gnomon. No, no; I never saw a man with a large nose who was not a blockhead—eh! Gelid, my love? The pimple for me—the regular pimple but allons.”—And where, having introduced the German refugees to Captain Deadeye, I go on to say that I thereupon dived into the midshipmen’s berth for a morsel of comfort, and was soon “far into the secrets of a pork pie,”—he lay back, and exclaimed with a long drawling emphasis—“A pork pie!”
“A pork pie!” said Paul Gelid.
“Why, do you know,” said Mr Wagtail—“I—why, I never in all my life saw a pork pie.”
“My dear Pepperpot,” chimed in Gelid, “we both forget. Don’t you remember the day we dined with the Admiral at the pen, in July last?”
“No,” said Wagtail, “I totally forget it.” Bang, I saw was all this while chuckling to himself—“I absolutely forget it altogether.”
“Bless me,” said Gelid, “don’t you remember the beautiful calipeever we had that day?”
“Really I do not,” said Pepperpot, “I have had so many good feeds there.”
“Why,” continued Gelid, “Lord love you, Wagtail, not remember that calipeever, so crisp in the broiling?”
“No,” said Wagtail, “really I do not.”
“Lord, man, it had a pudding in its belly.”
“Oh, now I remember,” said Wagtail.
Bang laughed outright, and I could not help making a hole in my manners also, even prepared as I was for my jest by my sable crony Pegtop.—To proceed.
Aaron looked at me with one of his quizzical grins; “Cringle, my darling, do you keep these Logs still?”
“I do, my dear sir, invariably.”
“What,” struck in little Wagtail, “the deuce!—for instance shall I, and Paul, and Aaron there, all be embalmed or preserved” (“Say pickled,” quoth the latter) “in these said Logs of yours?” This was too absurd, and I could not answer my allies for laughing. As for Gelid, he had been swaying himself backwards and forwards, half asleep, on the hind legs of his chair all this while, puffing away at a cigar.
“Ah!” said he half asleep, and but partly overhearing what was going on; “ah, Tom, my dear, you don’t say that we shall all be handed down to our poster”—a long yawn—“to our poster” another yawn—when Bang, watching his opportunity as he sat opposite, gently touched one of the fore-legs of the balanced chair with his toe, while he finished Gelid’s sentence by interjecting, “iors,” as the conch fell back and floundered over on his stem; his tormentor drawling out in wicked mimicry.
“Yes, dear Gelid, so sure as you have been landed down on your posteriors now—ah—you shall be handed down to your posterity hereafter, by that pestilent little scamp Cringle. Ah, Tom, I know you. Paul, Paul, it will be paulo postfuturum with you, my lad.”
Here we were interrupted by my steward’s entering with his tallow face. “Dinner on the table, sir.” We adjourned accordingly.
After dinner we carried on very much as usual, although the events of the previous day had their natural effect; there was little mirth, and no loud laughter. Once more we all turned in, the calm still continuing, and next morning after breakfast, friend Aaron took to the Log again.
But the most amusing exhibition took place when he came to the description of the row in the dark stair at the agent’s house, where the negroes fight for the scraps, and capsize Treenail, myself, and the brown lady, down the steps.
“Why, I say, Tom,” again quoth Aaron, “I never knew before, that you were in Jamaica at the period you here write of.”
“Why, my dear sir, I scarcely can say that I was there, my visit was so hurried.”
“Hurried!” rejoined he, “hurried—by no means; were you not in the island for four or five hours? Ah, long enough to have authorized your writing an anti-slavery pamphlet of one hundred and fifty pages.”
I smiled.
“Oh, you may laugh, my boy, but it is true—what a subject for an anti— slavery lecture—listen and be instructed.” Here our friend shook himself as a bruiser does to ascertain that all is right before he throws up his guard, and for the first five minutes he only jerked his right shoulder this way and his left shoulder t’other way, while his fins walloped down against his sides like empty sleeves; at length, as he warmed, he stretched forth his arms like Saint Paul in the Cartoon and although he now and then could not help sticking his tongue in his cheek, still the exhibition was so true and so exquisitely comical, that I never shall forget it.—“The whole white inhabitants of Kingston are luxurious monsters, living in more than Eastern splendour; and their universal practice, during their magnificent repasts, is to entertain themselves, by compelling their black servants to belabour each other across the pate with silver ladles, and to stick drumsticks of turkeys down each other’s throats. Merciful heaven! only picture the miserable slaves, each with the spaul of a turkey sticking in his gob; dwell upon that, my dearly beloved hearers, dwell upon that—and then let those who have the atrocious hardihood to do so, speak of the kindliness of the planters hearts. Kindliness! kindliness, to cram the leg of a turkey down a man’s throat, while his yoke-fellow in bondage is fracturing his tender woolly skull—for all negroes, as is well known, have craniums, much thinner, and more fragile than an egg-shell—with so tremendous a weapon as a silver ladle? Ay, a silver ladle!!! Some people make light of a silver ladle as an instrument of punishment—it is spoken of as a very slight affair, and that the blows inflicted by it are mere child’s play. If any of you, my beloved hearers, labour under this delusion, and will allow me, for your edification, to hammer you about the chops with one of the aforesaid silver soup-ladles of those yellow tyrants, for one little half hour, I pledge myself the delusion shall be dispelled once and for ever. Well then, after this fearful scene has continued for, I dare not say how long—the black butler—ay, the black butler, a slave himself—oh, my friends, even the black butlers are slaves the very men who minister the wine in health which maketh their hearts glad, and the castor oil in sickness, which maketh them any thing but of a cheerful countenance—this very black butler is desired, on peril of having a drumstick stuck into his own gizzard also, and his skull fractured by the aforesaid iron ladles—red hot, it may be—ay, and who shall say they are not full of molten lead? yes, molten lead— does not our reverend brother Lachrimac Roarem say that the ladles might have been full of molten lead, and what evidence have we on the other side, that they were not full of molten lead? Why, none at all, none— nothing but the oaths of all the naval and military officers who have ever served in these pestilent settlements; and of all the planters and merchants in the West Indies, the interested planters—those planters who suborn all the navy and army to a man—those planters whose molasses is but another name for human blood. (Here a large puff and blow, and a swabification of the white handkerchief, while the congregation blow a flourish of trumpets.) My friends—(another puff)—my friends—we all know, my friends, that bullocks blood is largely used in the sugar refineries in England, but, alas! there is no bullocks blood used in the refineries in the West Indies. This I will prove to you on the oath of six dissenting clergymen. No. What then is the inference? Oh, is it not palpable? Do you not every day, as jurors, hang men on circumstantial evidence? Are not many of yourselves hanged and transported every year, on the simple fact being proved, of your being found stooping down in pity over some poor fellow with a broken head, with your hands in his breeches pockets in order to help him up? And can you fail to draw the proper inference in the present case? Oh, no! no! my friends, it is the blood of the negroes that is used in these refining pandemoniums of the poor negroes, who are worth one hundred pounds apiece to their masters, and on whose health and capacity for work these same planters absolutely and entirely depend.”
Here our friend gathered all his energies, and began to roar like a perfect bull of Bashan, and to swing his arms about like the sails of a windmill, and to stamp and jump, and lollop about with his body as he went on.
“Well, this butler, this poor black butler—this poor black slave butler this poor black Christian slave butler—for he may have been a Christian, and most likely was a Christian, and indeed must have been a Christian—is enforced, after all the cruelties already related, on pain of being choked with the leg of a turkey himself, and having molten lead poured down his own throat, to do what?—who would not weep?—to—to—to chuck each of his fellow-servants, poor miserable creatures! each with a bone in his throat, and molten lead in his belly, and a fractured skull—to chuck them, neck and croup, one after another, down a dark staircase, a pitch-dark staircase, amidst a chaos of plates and dishes, and the hardest and most expensive china, and the finest cut crystal— that the wounds inflicted may be the keener and silver spoons, and knives and forks. Yea, my Christian brethren, carving knives and pitchforks right down on the top of their brown mistresses, who are thereby invariably bruised like the clown in the pantomime—at least as I am told he is, for I never go to such profane Places—oh, no!—bruised as flat as pancakes, and generally murdered outright on the spot. Last of all the landlord gets up, and kicks the miserable butler himself down after his mates, into the very heart of the living mass; and this not once and away, but every day in the week, Sundays not excepted. Oh, my dear, dear hearers, can you can you, with your fleshy hearts thumping and bumping against your small ribs, forget the black butler, and the mulatto concubines, and the pitchforks, and the iron ladles full of molten lead? My feelings overpower me, I must conclude. Go in peace, and ponder these things in your hearts, and pay your sixpences at the doors.—Exeunt omnes, piping their eyes, and blowing their noses.”
Our shouts of laughter interrupted our friend, who never moved a muscle.
Again, where old Crowfoot asks his steward—“How does the privateer lay?”
“There again now,” said Aaron, with an irritable grin,—“why, Tom, your style is most pestilent—you lay here and you lay there—are you sure that you are not a hen, Tom?”
One more touch at Massa Aaron, and I have done. After coming to the description of the horrible carnage that the fire from the Transport caused on the privateer’s deck before she sheered off, I remarked “I never recall that early and dismal scene to my recollection,—the awful havoc created on the schooner’s deck by our fire, the struggling, and crawling, and wriggling of the dark mass of wounded men, as they endeavoured, fruitlessly, to shelter themselves from our guns, even behind the dead bodies of their slain shipmates—without conjuring up a very fearful and harrowing image.”
“Were you ever at Biggleswade, my dear sir?”
“To be sure I have,” said Mr Bang.
“Then did you ever see an eel-pot, with the water drawn off, when the snake-like fish were twining, and twisting, and crawling, like Brobdignag maggots, in living knots, a horrible and disgusting mass of living abomination, amidst the filthy slime at the bottom?”
“Ach—have done, Tom—hang your similes. Can’t you cut your coat by me, man? Only observe the delicacy of mine.”
“The corby craw for instance,” said I, laughing.
“Ever at Biggleswade!” struck in Paul Gelid. “Ever at Biggleswade! Lord love you, Cringle, we have all been at Biggleswade. Don’t you know,” (how he conceived I should have known, I am sure I never could tell,) “don’t you know that Wagtail and I once made a voyage to England, ay, in the hurricane months, too—ah—for the express purpose of eating eels there,—and Lord, Tom, my dear fellow,” (here he sunk his voice into a most dolorous key,) “let me tell you that we were caught in a hurricane, in the Gulf, and very nearly lost, when, instead of eating eels, sharks would have eaten usah—and at length driven into Havannah— ah. And when we did get home”—(here I thought my excellent friend would have cried outright)—“Lord, sir! we found that the fall was not the season to eat eels in after all—ah—that is, in perfection. But we found out from Whiffle, whom we met in town, and who had learned it from the guard of the North mail, that one of the last season’s pots was still on hand at Biggleswade; so down we trundled in the mail that very evening.”
“And don’t you remember the awful cold I caught that night, being obliged to go outside?” quoth Waggy.
“Ah, and so you did, my dear fellow,” continued his ally.
“But gracious—on alighting, we found that the agent of a confounded gormandizing Lord Mayor had that very evening boned the entire contents of the only remaining pot, for a cursed livery dinnerah. Eels, indeed! we got none but those of the new catch, full of mud, and tasting of mud and red worms. Wagtail was really very ill in consequence—ah.”
Pepperpot had all this while listened with mute attention, as if the narrative had been most moving, and I question not he thought so; but Bang—oh, the rogue!—looked also very grave and sympathizing, but there was a laughing devil in his eye, that showed he was inwardly enjoying the beautiful rise of his friends.
We were here interrupted by a hail from the look-out man at the masthead,——‘Land right a-head.’
“What does it look like?” said I.
“It makes in low hummocks, sir. Now I see houses on the highest one.”
“Hurrah, Nassau, New Providence, ho!”
Shortly after we made the land about Nassau, the breeze died away, and it fell nearly calm.
“I say, Thomas,” quoth Aaron, “for this night at least we must still be your guests, and lumber you on board of your seventy-four. No chance, so far as I see, of getting into port to-night; at least if we do, it will be too late to go on shore.”
He said truly, and we therefore made up our mind to sit down once more to our rough and round dinner, in the small, hot, choky cabin of the Wave. As it happened, we were all in high glee. I flattered myself that my conduct in the late affair would hoist me up a step or two on the roster for promotion, and my excellent friends were delighted at the idea of getting on shore.
After the cloth had been drawn, Mr Bang opened his fire.
“Tom, my boy, I respect your service, but I have no great ambition to belong to it. I am sure no bribe that I am aware of could ever tempt me to make ‘my home upon the deep,’ and I really am not sure that it is a very gentlemanly calling after all.—Nay, don’t look glum; what I meant was, the egregious weariness of spirit you must all undergo from consorting with the same men day after day, hearing the same jokes repeated for the hundredth time, and, whichever way you turn, seeing the same faces morning, noon, and night, and listening to the same voices. Oh! I should die in a year’s time were I to become a sailor.”
“But,” rejoined I, “you have your land bores in the same way that we have our sea bores; and we have this advantage over you, that if the devil should stand at the door, we can always escape from them sooner or later, and can buoy up our souls with the certainty that we can so escape from them at the end of the cruise at the farthest; whereas if you happen to have taken root amidst a colony of bores on shore, why you never can escape, unless you sacrifice all your temporalities for that purpose; ergo, my dear sir, our life has its advantages, and yours has it disadvantages.”
“Too true—too true,” rejoined Mr Bang. “In fact, judging from my own small experience, Borism is fast attaining a head it never reached before. Speechifying is the crying and prominent vice of the age. Why will the ganders not recollect that eloquence is the gift of heaven, Thomas? A man may improve it unquestionably, but the Promethean fire, the electrical spark, must be from on high. No mental perseverance or education could ever have made a Demosthenes, or a Cicero, in the ages long past; nor an Edmund Burke.”
“Nor an Aaron Bang in times present,” said I.
“Hide my roseate blushes, Thomas,” quoth Aaron, as he continued—“Would that men would speak according to their gifts, study Shakspeare and Don Quixote, and learn of me; and that the real blockhead would content himself with speaking when he is spoken to, drinking when he is drunken to, and ganging to the kirk when the bell rings. You never can go into a party nowadays, that you don’t meet with some shallow, prosing, pestilent ass of a fellow, who thinks that empty sound is conversation; and not unfrequently there is a spice of malignity in the blockhead’s composition; but a creature of this calibre you can wither, for it is not worth crushing, by withholding the sunshine of your countenance from it, or by leaving it to drivel on, until the utter contempt of the whole company claps to change the figure—a wet night—cap as an extinguisher on it, and its small stinking flame flickers and goes out of itself. Then there is your sentimental water-fly, who blaws in the lugs of the women, and clips the King’s English, and your high-flying dominie body, who whumles them outright. I speak in a figure. But all these are as dust in the balance to the wearisome man of ponderous acquirements, the solemn blockhead who usurps the pas, and if he happen to be rich, fancies himself entitled to prose and palaver away, as if he were Sir Oracle, or as if the pence in his purse could ever fructify the cauld parritch in his pate into pregnant brain. There is a plateful of P’s for you at any rate, Tom. Beautiful exemplification of the art alliterative—an’t it?”