THEMOSQUITO SHORE.Chapter I.
A month in Jamaica is enough for any sinner’s punishment, let alone that of a tolerably good Christian. At any rate, a week had given me a surfeit of Kingston, with its sinister, tropical Jews, and variegated inhabitants, one-half black, one-third brown, and the balance as fair as could be expected, considering the abominable, unintelligible Congo-English which they spoke. Besides, the cholera which seems tobe domesticated in Kingston, and to have become one of its local institutions, had begun to spread from the stews, and to invade the more civilized parts of the town. All the inhabitants, therefore, whom the emancipation had left rich enough to do so, were flying to the mountains, with the pestilence following, like a sleuth-hound, at their heels. Kingston was palpably no place for a stranger, and that stranger a poor-devil artist.
The cholera had cheated me of a customer. I was moody, and therefore swung myself in a hammock, lit a cigar, and held a grand inquisition on myself, as the poets are wont to do on their souls. It ran after this wise, with a very little noise but much smoke:—
“Life is pleasant at twenty-six. Do you like life?”
Rather.
“Then you can’t like the cholera?”
No!—with a hurried pull at the cigar.
“But you’ll have it here!”
Then I’ll be off!
“Where?”
Any where!
“Good, but the exchequer, my boy, how about that? You can’t get away without money.”
There was a long pause, a great cloud of smoke, and much swinging in the hammock, and a final echo—
Money!Yes, Imusthave money!
So I got up, spasmodically opened my portmanteau,dived deep amongst collars, pencils and foul linen, took out my purse, turned its contents on the table, and began to count.
Forty-three and a half, forty-four, forty-five, and this handful of small silver and copper. Call it fifty in all.
“Onlyfifty dollars!” ejaculated my mental interrogator.
Only fifty! responded I.
“’Twon’t do!”
I lit another cigar. It was clear enough, it wouldn’t do; and I got into the hammock again. Commend me to a hammock, (apitahammock, none of your canvas abominations,) and a cigar, as valuable aids to meditation and self-communion of all kinds. There was a long silence, but the inquisition went on, until the cigar was finished. Finally “I’ll do it!” I exclaimed, in the voice of a man determined on some great deed, not agreeable but necessary, and I tossed the cigar stump out of the window. But what I determined to do, may seem no great thing after all; it was only to paint the portrait of my landlady.
“Yes, I’ll paint the old wench!”
Now, I am an artist, not an author, and have got the cart before the horse, inasmuch as my narrative does not preserve the “harmonies,” as every well-considered composition should do. It has just occurred to me that I should first havetold who I am, and how I came to be in Jamaica, and especially in that filthy place, Kingston. It isn’t a long story, and if it is not too late, I will tell it now.
As all the world knows, there are people who sell rancid whale oil, and deal in soap, and affect a great contempt for artists. They look down grandly on the quiet, pale men who paint their broad red faces on canvas, and seem to think that the few greasy dollars which they grudgingly pay for their flaming immortality, should be received with meek confusion and blushing thanks, as a rare exhibition of condescension and patronage. I never liked such patronage, and therefore would paint no red faces. But there is a great difference between red, bulbous faces, and rosy faces. There was that sweet girl at the boarding-school in L—— Place, the Baltimore girl, with the dark eyes and tresses of the South, and the fair cheek and elastic step of the North! Of course, I painted her portrait, a dozen times at least, I should say. I could paint it now; and I fear it is more than painted on my heart, or it wouldn’t rise smiling here, to distract my thoughts, make me sigh, and stop my story.
An artist who wouldn’t paint portraits and had a soul above patronage—what was there for him to do in New York? Two compositions a year in the Art Union, got in through Mr. Sly, the manager, and a friend of mine, were not an adequate support for the most moderate man. I’ll paint grand historical paintings, thought I one day, and straightwaypurchased a large canvas. I had selected my subject, Balboa, the discoverer of the Pacific, bearing aloft the flag of Spain, rushing breast-deep in its waves, and claiming its boundless shores and numberless islands for the crown of Castile and Leon. I had begun to sketch in the plumed Indians, gazing in mute surprise upon this startling scene, when it occurred to me—for I have patches of common sense scattered amongst the flowery fields of my fancy—to count over the amount of my patrimonial portion. Grand historical paintings require years of study and labor, and I found I had but two hundred dollars, owed for a month’s lodging, and had an unsettled tailor’s account. It was clear that historical painting was a luxury, for the present at least, beyond my reach. It was then some evil spirit, (I strongly suspect it was the ——,) taking the cue doubtless from my projected picture, suggested:—
“Try landscape, my boy; you have a rare hand for landscapes—good flaming landscapes, full of yellow and vermillion, you know!”
Although there was no one in the room, I can swear to a distinct slap on the back, after the emphatic “you know” of the tempter. It was a true diabolical suggestion, the yellow and vermillion, but not so sulphurous as what followed:—
“Go to the tropics boy, the glorious tropics, where the sun is supreme, and never shares his dominion with blue-nosed, leaden-colored, rheumy-eyed frost-gods; go there, and catch the matchlesstints of the skies, the living emerald of the forests, and the light-giving azure of the waters; go where the birds are rainbow-hued, and the very fish are golden; where—”
But I had heard enough; I was blinded by the dazzling panorama which Fancy swept past my vision, and cried, with enthusiastic energy,
“Hold; I’ll go to the glorious tropics!”
And I went—more’s the pity—in a little dirty schooner, full of pork and flour; and that is the way I came to be in Jamaica, dear reader, if you want to know. I had been there a month or more, and had wandered all over the really magnificent interior, and filled my portfolio with sketches. But that did not satisfy me; there were other tropical lands, where Nature had grander aspects, where there were broad lakes and high and snow-crowned volcanoes, which waved their plumes of smoke in mid-heaven, defiantly, in the very face of the sun; lands through whose ever-leaved forests Cortez, Balboa, and Alvarado, and Cordova had led their mailed followers, and in whose depths frowned the strange gods of aboriginal superstition, beside the deserted altars and unmarked graves of a departed and mysterious people. Jamaica was beautiful certainly, but I longed for what the transcendentalists call the sublimely-beautiful, or, in plain English, the combined sublime and beautiful—for, in short, an equatorial Switzerland. And, although Jamaica was fine in scenery, its dilapidated plantations, and filthy, lazy negroes, already more than half relapsedinto native and congenial barbarism, were repugnant to my American notions and tastes. They grinned around me, those negroes, when I ate, and scratched their heads over my paper when I drew. They followed me every where, like black jackals, and jabbered their incomprehensive lingo in my ears until they deafened me. And then their odor under tropical heats! Faugh! “’Twas rank, and smelt to heaven!”
I had, therefore, come down from the interior to set up my easel in Kingston, paint a few views, and thereby raise the wind for a trip to the mainland. Of course, I did not fly from painting red-faced portraits in the United States, to paint ebony ones in Jamaica. My scruples, however, did not apply to customers. There was a “brown man,” which is genteel Jamaican for mulatto, who was an Assembly-man, or something of the kind, and wanted a view of the edifice at Spanish-town, wherein he legislated for the “emancipated island.” I had agreed to paint it for the liberal compensation of twenty pounds. But one hot, murky morning, my brown lawgiver took the cholera, and before noon was not only dead, but buried—and my picture only half-finished!Mem.As people have a practice of dying, always get your pay beforehand.
Voltaire, I believe, has said, that if a toad were asked his ideal of beauty, he would, most likely, describe himself, and dwell complacently on a cold, clammy, yellow belly, a brown, warty, corrugated back, and become ecstatic on the subject of goggleeyes. And, I verily believe, that if my landlady had been asked the same question, she would have coquettishly patted up her woolly curls over each oleaginous cheek, and glanced toward the mirror, by way of reply. Black, glossy black, andfat, marvelously fat, yet she was possessed, even she, of her full share of feminine vanity. There was no mistaking, from the first day of my arrival, that her head was running on a portrait of herself. She was fond of money and penurious, and careful, therefore, not to venture upon a proposition until she had got some kind of a clew as to what her immortality would be likely to cost. I had, however, diplomatically evaded all of her approaches, up to the unfortunate day when my Assembly-man died. She brought me the news herself, and saw that it annoyed rather than shocked me, and that I stopped painting with the air of a man abandoning a bad job. She evidently thought the time favorable for acoup de main; there was a gleam of cunning in her little, round, half-buried eyes, and the very ebony of her cheek lightened palpably, as she said:
“So your picture will be no good for nothing?”
No!
“You have not got the——?”
And she significantly rubbed the forefinger of one hand in the palm of the other.
No!
There was a pause, and then she resumed:
“I want a picture!”
Eh?
“A picture, you know!”
And now she complacently stroked down her broad face, and exhibited a wide, vermillion chasm, with a formidable phalanx of ivories, by way of a suggestive smile.
No, I never paint portraits!
“Not for ten pounds?”
No; nor for a hundred,—go!
And my landlady rolled herself out of the room with a motion which, had she weighed less than two hundred, might have passed for a toss.
It was on the evening of this day, and after this conversation, one half of the Assembly-house at Spanish-town staring redly from the canvas in the corner, that I lay in my hammock and soliloquized as aforesaid. It was thus and then, that I resolved to paint my landlady.
And having now, by means of this long parenthesis, restored the harmonies of my story, and got my horse and cart in correct relative positions, I am ready to go ahead.
I not only resolved to paint my landlady, but I did it, right over the half-finished Assembly-house. It was the first, and, by the blessing of Heaven, so long as there are good potatoes to be dug at the rate of six cents the bushel, it shall be my last portrait. I can not help laughing, even now, at that fat, glistening face, looking for all the world as if it had been newly varnished, surmounted by agaudy red scarf, wound round the head in the form of a peaked turban; and two fat arms, rolling down like elephants’ trunks against a white robe for a background, which concealed a bust that passeth description. That portrait—“long may it wave!” as the man said, at the Kossuth dinner, when he toasted “The day we celebrate!”
MY LANDLADY.
MY LANDLADY.
MY LANDLADY.
My landlady was satisfied, and generous withal, for she not only paid me the ten pounds, and gave me my two weeks board and lodging in the bargain, but introduced me to a colored gentleman, a friend of hers, who sailed a little schooner twice a year to the Mosquito Shore, on the coast of Central America, where he traded off refuse rum and gaudy cottons for turtle-shells and sarsaparilla. There was a steamer from Kingston, once a month, to Carthagena, Chagres, San Juan, Belize, and “alongshore;” but, for obvious reasons, I could not go in a steamer. So I struck up a bargain with the fragrant skipper, by the terms of which he bound himself to land me, bag and baggage, at Bluefields, the seat of Mosquito royalty, for the sum of three pounds, “currency.”
Why Captain Ponto (for so I shall call my landlady’s friend, the colored skipper) named his little schooner the “Prince Albert,” I can not imagine, unless he thought thereby to do honor to the Queen-Consort; for the aforesaid schooner had evidently got old, and been condemned, long before that lucky Dutchman woke the echoes of Gotha with his baby cries. The “Prince Albert” was of about seventy tons burden, built something on the model of the “Jung-frau,” the first vessel of the Netherlands that rolled itself into New York bay, like some unwieldy porpoise, after a rapid passage of about six months from the Hague. The wise men of the Historical Society have satisfactorily shown, after long and diligent research, that the “Jung-frau” measured sixty feet keel, sixty feet beam, and sixty feet hold, and was modeled after one of Rubens’ Venuses. The dimensions of the “Prince Albert” were every way the same, only twenty feet less. The sails were patched and the cordage spliced, and she did not leak so badly as to require more than six hours’ steady pumping out of the twenty-four. The crew was composed of Captain Ponto, Thomas, his mate, one seaman, and an Indianboy from Yucatan, whose business it was to cook and do the pumping. As may be supposed, the Indian boy did not rust for want of occupation.
It was a clear morning, toward the close of December, that Captain Ponto’s wife, a white woman, with a hopeful family of six children, the three eldest with shirts, and the three youngest without, came down to the schooner to see us off. I watched the parting over the after-bulwarks, and observed the tears roll down Mrs. Ponto’s cheeks as she bade her sable spouse good-by. I wondered if she really could have any attachment for her husband, and if custom and association had utterly worn away the natural and instinctive repugnance which exists between the superior and inferior races of mankind? I thought of the condition of Jamaica itself, and mentally inquired if it were not due to a grand, practical misconception of the laws of Nature, and the inevitable result of their reversal? It can not be denied that where the superior and inferior races are brought in contact, and amalgamate, there we uniformly find a hybrid stock springing up, with most, if not all of the vices, and few, if any of the virtues of the originals. And it will hardly be questioned, by those experimentally acquainted with the subject, that the manifest lack of public morality and private virtue, in the Spanish-American States, has followed from the fatal facility with which the Spanish colonists have intermixed with the negroes and Indians. The rigid and inexorable exclusion, in respectto the inferior races, of the dominant blood of North America, flowing through different channels perhaps, yet from the same great Teutonic source, is one grand secret of its vitality, and the best safeguard of its permanent ascendency.
Mrs. Ponto wept; and as we slowly worked our way outside of Port Royal, I could see her waving her apron, for she was innocent of a more classical signal, in fond adieus. We finally got out from under the lee of the land, and caught in our sails the full trade-wind, blowing steadily in the desired direction. I sat long on deck, watching the receding island sinking slowly in the bright sea, until Captain Ponto signified to me, in thepatoisof Jamaica, which the deluded people flatter themselves is English, that dinner was ready, and led the way into what he called the cabin. This cabin was a little den, seven feet by nine at the utmost, low, dark and dirty, with no light or air except what entered through the narrow hatchway, and, consequently, hot as an oven. Two lockers, one on each side, answered for seats by day, and, covered with suspicious mattresses, for beds by night. The cabin was sacred to Captain Ponto and myself, the mate having been displaced to make room for the gentleman who had paid three pounds for his passage! I question if the “Prince Albert” had ever before been honored with a passenger; certainly not since she had come into the hands of Captain Ponto, who therefore put his best foot forward, with a full consciousness of the importance of the incident.Ponto had been a slave once, and was consequently imperious and tyrannical now, toward all people in a subordinate relation to himself. Yet, as he had evidently been owned by a man of consequence, he had not entirely lost his early deference for the white man, and sometimes forgot Ponto the captain in Ponto the chattel. It was in the latter character only, that he was perfectly natural; and, although I derived no little amusement from his attempts to enact a loftier part, I shall not trouble the reader with an episode on Captain Ponto. He was a very worthy darkey, with a strong aversion to water, both exteriorly and internally. The mate, and the man who constituted the crew, were ordinary negroes of no possible account.
But Antonio, the Indian boy, who cooked and pumped, and then pumped and cooked—I fear he never slept, for when there was not a “sizzling” in the little black caboose, there was sure to be a screeching of the rickety pump—Antonio attracted my interest from the first; and it was increased when I found that he spoke a little English, was perfect in Spanish, and withal could read in both languages. There was something mysterious in finding him among these uncouth negroes, with his relatively fair skin, intelligent eyes, and long, well-ordered, black hair. He was like a lithe panther among lumbering bears; and he did his work in a way which accorded with his Indian character, without murmur, and with a kindof silent doggedness, that implied but little respect for his present masters. He seldom replied to their orders in words, and then only in monosyllables. I asked Captain Ponto about him, but he knew nothing, except that he was from Yucatan, and had presented himself on board only the day previously, and offered to work his passage to the main land. And Captain Ponto indistinctly intimated that he had taken the boy solely on my account, which, of course, led to the inference on my part, that the captain ordinarily did his own cooking. He also ventured a patronizing remark about the Indians generally, to the effect that they made very good servants, “if they were kept under;” which, coming from an ex-slave, I thought rather good.
ANTONIO.
ANTONIO.
ANTONIO.
All this only served to interest me the more in Antonio; and, although I succeeded in engaging him in ordinary conversation, yet I utterly failed in drawing him out, as the saying is, in respect to his past history, or future purposes. Whenever I approached these subjects he became silent and impassible, and his eyes assumed an expression of cold inquiry, not unmingled with latent suspicion, which half inclined me to believe that he was a fugitive from justice. Yet he did not look the felon or knave; and when the personal inquiries dropped, his face resumed its usual pleasant although sad expression, and I became ashamed that I had suspected him. There was certainly something singular about Antonio; but, as I could imagine novery profound mystery attaching to a cook, on board of the “Prince Albert,” after the first day, I made no attempts to penetrate his secrets, but sought rather to attach him to me, as a prospectively useful companion in the country to which I was bound. So I relieved him occasionally at the pump, although he protested against it; and finally, to the horror of Captain Ponto, and the palpable high disdain of the mate, I became so intimate with him as to show him my portfolio of drawings. His admiration, I found to my surprise, was always judiciously bestowed, and his appreciation of outline and coloring showed that he had the spirit of an artist. Several times, in glancingover the drawings, he stopped short, looked up, his face full of intelligence, as if about to speak, and I paused to listen. Each time, however, the smile vanished, the flexible muscles ceased their play and became rigid, and a cold, filmy mist settled over the clear eyes which had looked into mine. Whatever was Antonio’s secret, great or small, it was evidently one that he half-wished, half-feared to reveal. I was puzzled to think that there could exist any relation between it and my paintings; but Antonio was only a cook, and so I dismissed all reflection on the subject.
On our third day out, the weather, which up to that time had been clear and beautiful, began to change, and night settled black and threatening around us. The wind had increased, but it was loaded with sultry vapors—the hot breath of the storm which was pressing on our track. Captain Ponto was not a scientific sailor, and kept no other than what is called “dead reckoning.” He had made the voyage very often, and was confident of his course. Upon that point, therefore, I gave myself no uneasiness; not so much from faith in Captain Ponto, as because there was nothing in the world to be done, except to follow his opinion. Nevertheless the captain was serious, and consulted an antediluvian chart which he kept in his cabin. It was a Rembrandtish picture, that negro tracing his forefinger slowly over the chart, by the light of a candle, which only half revealed the little cabin, while it brought out his grizzly head and anxiousface in strong relief against the darkness. What Captain Ponto learned from all this study is more than I can tell; but when he came on deck, he ordered a reef to be made in the sails, and a variation of several points in our course, for the wind not only freshened, but veered to the north-east. The hot blasts or puffs of air became more and more frequent, and occasional sheets of lightning gleamed along the horizon. The sea, too, was full of phosphorescent light; fiery monsters seemed to leap around us and wreath and twine their livid volumes in our wake. I could hear the hiss of their forked tongues where the waters closed under our stern. I stood, leaning over the bulwarks, gazing on the gleaming waves, and thinking of home—for the voyager on the great deep always thinks of home, when darkness envelops him, and the storm threatens—when Antonio silently approached, so silently that I did not hear him, and took his place at my side. I was somewhat startled, therefore, when, changing my position a little, I saw, by the dim, reflected light of the sea, his eyes fixed earnestly on mine. “Ah, Antonio,” I said, “is that you?” and I placed my hand familiarly on his shoulder. He shrank beneath it, as if it had been fire. “What’s the matter?” I exclaimed, reproachfully; “have I hurt you?”
“Pardon me!” he ejaculated, rather than spoke, in a voice deep and tremulous; “I know now that it is not you who will die to-night!”
“What do you mean? You are not afraid, Antonio?Who thinks of dying?” I replied, in a light tone.
“No! it is not myself. I was afraid it might be you; for, sir,” and he laid a hand cold and clammy as that of a corpse on mine; “for, sir, there is death on board this vessel!”
This was said in a voice so awed and earnest that I was impressed deeply, in spite of myself, and for some moments made no reply. “You talk wildly, Antonio,” I finally said; “we are going on bravely, and shall all be in Bluefields together in a day or two.”
“All of us, never,” he replied, “never! The Lord, who never lies, has told me so!” and, pressing near me, he drew from his bosom something resembling a small, round plate of crystal, except that it seemed to be slightly luminous, and veined or clouded with green. “See, see!” he exclaimed, rapidly, and held the object close to my eyes. I instinctively obeyed, and gazed intently upon it. As I gazed, the clouds of green seemed to concentrate and assume a regular form, as the moisture of one’s breath passes away from a mirror, until I distinctly saw, in the center, the miniature of a human head, of composed and dignified aspect, but the eyes were closed, and all the lineaments had the rigidity of death.
“Do you see?”
“I do!”
“It isKucimen, the Lord who never lies!” and Antonio thrust his talisman in his bosom again,and slowly moved away. There was no mistake in what I had seen, and although I am not superstitious, yet the feeling that some catastrophe was impending gathered at my heart. It was in vain that I tried to smile at the Indian trick; the earnest voice of the Indian boy still sounded in my ears, “All of us, never!” What reason should he have for attempting to practice his Indiandiablerieon any one, least of all on me? I rejected the thought, and endeavored to banish the subject from my mind.
Meanwhile the wind had gathered strength, and Captain Ponto had taken in sail, so that we had no more standing than was necessary to keep the vessel steady before the wind. The waves now began to rise, the gloom deepened, the hot puffs of air became more and more frequent, and the broad lightning-sheets rose from the horizon to the very zenith. The thunder, too, came rolling on, every peal more distinctly, and occasional heavy drops of rain fell with an ominous sound on the deck. The storm was evidently close at hand; and I left the side of the vessel, and approached the little cabin to procure myponcho, for I preferred the open deck and the storm to the suffocation below. The hatchway was nearly closed, but there was a light within. I stooped to remove the slide, and in doing so obtained a full view of the interior. The spectacle which presented itself was so extraordinary that I stopped short, and looked on in mute surprise. The candle was standing on the locker, and kneelingbeside it was the captain. He was stripped to the waist, and held in one hand what appeared to be the horn of some animal, in which he caught the blood which dripped from a large gash in the fleshy part of his left arm, just above the elbow, while he muttered rapidly some rude and strangely-sounding words, unlike any I had ever before heard. My first impression was that Antonio had tried to fulfill his own prediction, by attempting the life of the captain; but I soon saw that he was performing some religious rite, a sacrifice or propitiation, such as theObimen still teach in Jamaica and Santo Domingo, and which are stealthily observed, even by the negroes professing Christianity and having a nominal connection with the church. I recognized in the horn the mysteriousgre-greof the Gold Coast, where the lowest form offetishworship prevails, and where human blood is regarded as the most acceptable of sacrifices. Respecting too rigidly all ceremonies and rites, which may contribute to the peace of mind of others, to think of disturbing them, I silently withdrew from the hatchway, and left the captain to finish his debasing devotions. In a short time he appeared on deck, and gave some orders in a calm voice, as one reassured and confident.
I was occupied below for only a few minutes, yet when I got on deck again the storm was upon us. The waves were not high, but the water seemed to be caught up by the wind, and to be drifted along, like snow, in blinding, drenching sheets. I was nearly driven off my feet by itsforce, and would have been carried overboard had I not become entangled in the rigging. The howling of the wind and the hissing of the water would have drowned the loudest voice, and I was so blinded by the spray that I could not see. Yet I could feel that we were driving before the hurricane with fearful rapidity. The very deck seemed to bend, as if ready to break, beneath our feet. I finally sufficiently recovered myself to be able, in the pauses of the wind, and when the lightning fell, to catch glimpses around me. Our sails were torn in tatters, the yards were gone, in fact every thing was swept from the deck except three dark figures, like myself, clinging convulsively to the ropes. On, on, half-buried in the sea, we drifted with inconceivable rapidity.
Little did we think that we were rushing on a danger more terrible than the ocean. The storm had buffeted us for more than an hour, and it seemed as if it had exhausted its wrath, and had begun to subside, when a sound, hoarse and steady, but louder even than that of the wind, broke on our ears. It was evident that we were approaching it, for every instant it became more distinct and ominous. I gazed ahead into the hopeless darkness, when suddenly a broad sheet of lightning revealed immediately before us, and not a cable’s length distant, what, under the lurid gleam, appeared to be a wall of white spray, dashing literally a hundred feet in the air—a hell of waters, from which there was no escape. “El Roncador!” shrieked thecaptain, in a voice of utter despair, that even then thrilled like a knife in my heart. The fearful moment of death had come, and I had barely time to draw a full breath of preparation for the struggle, when we were literally whelmed in the raging waters. I felt a shock, a sharp jerk, and the hiss and gurgle of the sea, a sensation of immense pressure, followed by a blow like that of a heavy fall. Again I was lifted up, and again struck down, but this time with less force. I had just enough consciousness left to know that I was striking on the sand, and I made an involuntary effort to rise and escape from the waves. Before I could gain my feet I was again struck down, again and again, until, nearer dead than alive, I at last succeeded in crawling to a spot where the water did not reach me. I strove to rise now, but could not; and, as that is the last thing I remember distinctly of that terrible night, I suppose I must have fallen into a swoon.
THE SHIPWRECK.
THE SHIPWRECK.
THE SHIPWRECK.