Tom Cringle's Log Part 63

"Where?" said I.

"There," said the man in an ecstasy of fear--"there"--and peering up into the forest, where the checkering dancing moonlight was flickering on the dun, herbless soil, as the gentle night-breeze made the leaves of the trees twinkle to and fro, I saw three dark figures advancing upon us.

"Here's a catastrophe, Tom, my boy" quoth Aaron, who, now that he had satisfied himself that the pistols were properly loaded and primed, had resumed all his wonted coolness in danger. "Ask that fellow who is enacting the statue on the top of the rock what he wants. I am a tolerable shot, you know; and if he means evil, I shall nick him before he can carry his carabine to his shoulder, take my word for it."

"Who is there, and what do you want?" No answer, the man above us continued as still as if he had actually been a statue of bronze.

Presently one of the three men in the wood sounded a short snorting note on a bullock's horn.

It would seem that until this moment their comrade above us had not been aware of their vicinity, for he immediately called out in the patois of St Domingo, "advance, and seize the travellers;" and thereupon was in the act of raising his piece to his shoulder, when crack--Bang tired his pistol. The man uttered a loud hah, but did not fall.

"Missed him, by all that is wonderful!" said my companion. "Now, Tom, it is your turn."

I levelled, and was in the very act of pulling the trigger, when the dark figure fell over slowly and stiffly on his back, and then began to struggle violently, and to cough loudly, as if he were suffocating. At length he rolled over and down the face of the rock, where he was caught by a strong clump of brushwood, and there he hung, while the coughing and crowing increased, and I felt a warm shower, as of heated water, sputter over my face. It was hot hot and salt--G.o.d of my fathers! it was blood. But there was no time for consideration; the three figures by this had been reinforced by six more, and they now, with a most fiendish yell, jumped down into the hollow basin, and surrounded us.

"Lay down your arms," one of them shouted.

"No," I exclaimed; "we are British officers, and armed, and determined to sell our lives dearly; and if you do succeed in murdering us, you may rest a.s.sured you shall be hunted down by bloodhounds."

I thought the game was up, and little dreamed that the name of Briton would, amongst the fastnesses of Haiti, have proved a talisman; but it did so. "We have no wish to injure you, but you must follow us, and see our general," said the man who appeared to take the lead amongst them.

Here two of the men scrambled up the face of the rock, and brought their wounded comrade down from where he hung, and laid him on the bank; he had been shot through the lungs, and could not speak. After a minute's conversation, they lifted him on their shoulders; and as our guide and Monsieur Pegtop had been instantly bound, we were only two to nine armed men, and accordingly had nothing for it but to follow the bearers of the wounded man, with our horses tumbling and scrambling up the river course, into which, by their order, we had now turned.

We proceeded in this way for about half a mile, when it was evident that the jaded beasts could not travel farther amongst the twisted trunks of trees and fragments of rock with which the river-course was now strewed. We therefore dismounted, and were compelled to leave them in charge of two of the brigands, and immediately began to scramble up the hill-side, through a narrow footpath, in one of the otherwise most impervious thickets that I had ever seen. Presently a black savage, half-naked like his companions, hailed, and told us to stand. Some pa.s.sword that we could not understand was given by our captors, and we proceeded, still ascending, until, turning sharp off to the left, we came suddenly round a pinnacle of rock, and looked down into a deep dell, with a winding path leading to the brink of it. It was a round c.o.c.kpit of a place, surrounded with precipitous limestone-rocks on all sides, from the fissures of which large trees and bushes sprung, while the bottom was a level piece of ground, covered with long hay-like gra.s.s, evidently much trodden down. Close to the high bank, right opposite, and about thirty yards from us, a wood-fire was sparkling cheerily against the grey rock; while, on the side next us, the roofs of several huts were visible, but there was no one moving about that we could see. The moment, however, that the man with the horn sounded a rough and most unmelodious blast, there was a buzz and a stir below, and many a short grunt arose out of the pit, and long yawns, and eigh, eighs! while a dozen splinters of resinous wood were instantly lit, and held aloft, by whose light I saw fifty or sixty half-naked, but well armed blacks, gazing up at us from beneath, their white eyes and whiter teeth glancing. Most of them had muskets and long knives, and several wore the military shake, while others had their heads bound round with the never-failing handkerchief. At length a fierce-looking fellow, dressed in short drawers, a round blue jacket, a pair of epaulets, and a most enormous c.o.c.ked hat, placed a sort of rough ladder, a prank with notches cut in it with a hatchet, against the bank next us, and in a loud voice desired us to descend. I did so with fear and trembling, but Mr Bang never lost his presence of mind for a moment; and, in answer to the black chief's questions, I again rested our plea on our being British officers, despatched on service from a squadron (and as I used the word, the poor little Wave and solitary corvette rose up before me) across the island to Jacmel, to communicate with another British force lying there. The man heard me with great patience; but when I looked round the circle of tatterdemalions, for there was ne'er a s.h.i.+rt in the whole company--Falstaff's men were a joke to them--with their bright arms sparkling to the red glare of the torches, that flared like tongues of flame overhead, while they grinned with their ivory teeth, and glared fiercely with their white eyeb.a.l.l.s on us--I felt that our lives were not worth an hour's purchase.

At length the leader spoke--"I am General Sanchez, driven to dispute President Petion's sway by his injustice to me--but I trust our quarrel is not hopeless; will you, gentlemen, on your return to Port-au-Prince, use your influence with him to withdraw his decree against me?"

This was so much out of the way the idea of our being deputed to mediate between such great personages as President Petion and one of his rebel generals, was altogether so absurd, that, under other circ.u.mstances, I would have laughed in the black fellow's face.

However, a jest here might have cost us our lives; so we looked serious, and promised.

"Upon your honours"--said the poor fellow.

"Upon our words of honour"--we rejoined.

"Then embrace me"--and the savage thereupon, stinking of tobacco and cocoa-nut oil, hugged me, and kissed me on both cheeks, and then did the agreeable in a similar way to Mr Bang. Here the coughing and moaning of the wounded man broke in upon the conference.

"What is that?" said Sanchez. One of his people told him. "Ah!" said he, with a good deal of savageness in his tone--"A--ha! blood?"

We promptly explained how it happened;--for a few moments, I did not know how he might take it.

"But I forgive you," at length said he--"however, my men may revenge their comrade. You must drink and eat with them."

This was said aside to us, as it were. He ordered some roasted plantains to be brought, and mixed some cruel bad tafia with water in an enormous gourd. He ate, and then took a pull himself we followed,--and he then walked round the circle, and carefully observed that every one had tasted also. Being satisfied on this head, he abruptly ordered us to ascend the ladder, and to pa.s.s on our way.

The poor fellow was mad, I believe. However, some time afterwards, the President hunted him down, and got hold of him, but I believe he never punished him. As for the wounded man, whether he did live or die, Tom Cringle does not know.

We were reconducted by our former escort to where we left our horses, remounted, and without farther let or hinderance arrived by day dawn at the straggling town of Jacmel. The situation is very beautiful, the town being built on the hillside, looking out seaward on a very safe roadstead, the anchorage being defended to the southward by bright blue shoals, and white breakers, that curl and roar over the coral reefs and ledges. As we rode up to Mr S----'s, the princ.i.p.al merchant in the place, and a Frenchman, we were again struck with the dilapidated condition of the houses, and the generally ruinous state of the town.

The brown and black population appeared to be lounging about in the most absolute idleness; and here, as at Port-au-Prince, every second man you met was a soldier. The women sitting in their little shops, nicely set out with a variety of gay printed goods, and the crews of the English vessels loading coffee, were the only individuals who seemed to be capable of any exertion.

"I say, Tom," quoth Ma.s.sa Aaron, "do you see that old fellow there?"

"What? that old grey-headed negro sitting in the arbour there?"

"Yes--the patriarch is sitting under the shadow of his own Lima bean."

And so in very truth he was. The stem was three inches in diameter, and the branches had been trained along and over a sparred arch, and were loaded with pods.

"I shall believe in the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, henceforth and for ever," said I.

We were most kindly entertained by Mr S----, and spent two or three days very happily. The evening of the day on which we arrived, we had strolled out about nine o'clock to take the air--our host and his clerks being busy in the counting-house--and were on our way home, when we looked in on them at their desks, before ascending to the apartments above. There were five clerks and Mr S----, all working away on the top of their tall mahogany tripods, by the light of their brown home-made wax candles, while three masters of merchantmen were sitting in a corner, comparing bills of lading, making up manifests, and I do not know what beside.

"It is now about time to close," said Mr S----; "have you any objection to a little music, gentlemen? or are you too much fatigued?"

"Music--music," said Mr Bang, "I delight in good music, but"--He was cut short by the whole bunch, the clerks and their master, closing their ledgers, and journals, and day-books, and cashbooks with a bang, while one hooked up a fiddle, another a clarionet, another a flute, &c, while Mr S----offered, with a smile, his own clarionet to Ma.s.sa Aaron, and holding out at the same time, with the true good-breeding of a Frenchman, a span-new reed. To my unutterable surprise he took it sucked in his lips--wet the reed in his mouth; then pa.s.sing his hand across his muzzle, coolly asked Mr S----what the piece was to be?

"Adeste fideles, if you please," said S----, rather taken aback. Mr Bang nodded--sounded a bar or two gave another very scientific flourish, and then calmly awaited the opening. He then tendered a fiddle to me altogether beyond my compa.s.s--but I offered to officiate on the kettledrum, the drummer being competent to something else. At a signal from our host away they all launched in full crash, and very melodious it was too, let me tell you, Aaron's instrument telling most famously.

The next day we went to visit a tafia property in the neighbourhood. On our way we pa.s.sed a dozen miserable-looking blacks, cleaning canes, followed by an ugly Turk of a brown man, almost naked, with the omnipresent glazed c.o.c.ked-hat, and a drawn cutla.s.s in his hand. He was abusing the poor devils most l.u.s.tily as we rode along, and stood so pertinaciously in the path, that I could not for the life of me pa.s.s without jostling him. "Le vous demands pardon," said I, with a most abject salaam to my saddle-bow. He knit his brows and shut his teeth hard, as he ground out between the glancing ivory, "Sacre!--voila ces foutres blancs la,"--clutching the hilt of his couteau firmly all the while. I thought he would have struck me. But Mr S----coming up, mollified the savage, and we rode on.

The tafia estate was a sore affair. It had once been a prosperous sugar plantation, as the broken panes and ruined houses, blackened by fire, were melancholy vouchers for; but now the whole cultivation was reduced to about a couple of acres of wiry sugar canes, and the boiling and distilling was carried on in a small unroofed nook of the original works.

Two days after this we returned to Port-au-Prince, and I could not help admiring the justness of Aaron's former description; for noisome exhalations were rising thick, as the evening sun shone hot and sickly on the long bank of fat black mud that covers the beach beneath the town. We found Captain Transom at Mr S----'s. I made my report of the state of the merchantmen loading on the south side of the island, and returned to rest, deucedly tired and stiff with my ride. Next morning Bang entered my room.

"Hillo, Tom--the skipper has been shouting for you this half hour--get up, man--get up."

"My dear sir, I am awfully tired."

"Oh!" sung Bang--"'I have a silent sorrow here' eh?"

It was true enough; no sailor rides seventy miles on end with impunity.

That same evening we bid adieu to our excellent host Mr S----, and the rising moon shone on us under weigh for Kingston, where two days after we safely anch.o.r.ed with the homeward bound trade. "The roaring seas Is not a place of ease," says a Point ditty. No more is the command of a small schooner in the West Indies. We had scarcely anch.o.r.ed, when the boarding officer from the flag-s.h.i.+p brought me a message to repair thither immediately. I did so. As I stepped on deck, the lieutenant was leaning on the drumhead of the capstan, with the signal-book open before him, while the signal-man was telling off the semaph.o.r.e, which was rattling away at the Admiral's pen, situated about five miles off.

"Ah! Cringle," said he, without turning his head, "how are you? glad to see you--wish you joy, my lad. Here, lend me a hand, will you? it concerns you." I took the book, and as the man reported, I pieced the following comfortable sentence together.

"Desire--Wave--fit--wood--water--instantly--to take convoy to Spanish Main--to-morrow morning--Mr Cringle--remain on board--orders will be sent--evening."

"Heigh ho, says Rowley," sang I Thomas, in great wrath and bitterness of spirit. "D----d hard--am I a duck, to live in the water altogether, entirely?"

"Tom, my boy," sung out a voice from the water. It was Aaron Bang's, who, along with Transom, had seen me go on board the receiving s.h.i.+p.

"Come along, man--come along--Transom is going to make interest to get you a furlough on sh.o.r.e; so come along, and dine with us in Kingston."

"I am ordered to sea to-morrow morning, my dear sir," said I, like to cry.--"No!"--"Too true, too true." So no help for it, I took a sad farewell of my friends, received my orders, laid in my provisions and water, hauled out into the fairway, and sailed for Santa Martha next morning at daybreak, with three merchant schooners under convoy one for Santa Martha--another for Carthagena--and the third for Porto-Bello.

We sailed on the 24th of such a month, and, after a pleasant pa.s.sage, anch.o.r.ed at Santa Martha, at 8 AM, on the 31st. When we came to anchor, we saluted, which seemed to have been a somewhat unexpected honour, as the return was fired from the fort after a most primitive fas.h.i.+on. A black fellow appeared with a shovel of live embers, one of which another sans culotte caught up in his hand, chucking it from one palm to another, until he ran to the breech of the first gun, where, clapping it on the touch-hole, he fired it off, and so on seriatim, through the whole battery, until the required number of guns were given, several of which, by the by, were shotted, as we could hear the b.a.l.l.s whiz overhead. The town lies on a small plain, at the foot of very high mountains, or rather on a sand-bank, formed from the was.h.i.+ngs from these mountains. The summit of the highest of them, we could see from the deck, was covered with snow, which at sunrise, in the clear light of the cool grey dawn, shone, when struck by the first rays of the sun, like one entire amethyst. Oh, how often I longed for the wings of the eagle, to waft me from the hot deck of the little vessel, where the thermometer in the shade stood at 95, far up amongst the s.h.i.+ning glaciers, to be comforted with cold!

One striking natural phenomenon is exhibited here, arising out of the vicinity of this stupendous p.r.o.ng of the Cordilleras. The sea breeze blows into the harbour all day, but in the night, or rather towards morning, the cold air from the high regions rushes down, and blows with such violence off the land, that my convoy and myself were nearly blown out to sea the first night after we arrived; and it was only by following the practice of the native craft, and anchoring close under the lee of the beach--in fact, by having an anchor high and dry on the sh.o.r.e itself--the player, as the Spaniards call it--that we could count on riding through the night with security or comfort.

There are several small islands at the entrance of the harbour, on the highest of which is a fort, that might easily be rendered impregnable; it commands both the town and harbour. The place itself deserves little notice; the houses are mean, and interspersed with negro huts, but there is one fine church, with several tolerable paintings in it. One struck me as especially grotesque, although I had often seen queer things in Roman Catholic churches in Europe. It was a representation of h.e.l.l, with Old Nicholas, under the guise of a dragon, entertaining himself with the soul of an unfortunate heretic in his claws, who certainly appeared far from comfortable; while a lot of his angels were was.h.i.+ng the sins off a set of fine young men, as you would the dirt off scabbit potatoes, in a sea of liquid fire. But their saints!--I often rejoiced that Aaron Bang was not with me; we should unquestionably have quarrelled; for as to the manner in which they were dressed and decorated, the most fantastic mode a girl ever did up her doll in, was a joke to it. Still these wooden deities are treated with such veneration; that I do believe their ornaments, which are of ma.s.sive gold and silver, are never, or very rarely, stolen.

On the evening of the 2nd of the following month we sailed again, but having been baffled by calms and light winds, it was the 4th before we anch.o.r.ed off the St Domingo gate at Carthagena, and next morning we dropped down to Boca Chica, and saw our charge, a fine das.h.i.+ng schooner of 150 tons, safe into the harbour. About 9 AM, we had weighed, but we had scarcely got the anchor catted, when it came on to blow great guns from the northwester most unusual thing hereabouts--so it was down anchor again; and as I had made up my mind not to attempt it again before morning, I got the gig in the water with all convenient speed; and that same forenoon I reached the town, and immediately called on the Viceroy, but under very different circ.u.mstances from the time Mr Splinter and I had entered it along with the conquering army.