Tom Cringle's Log Page 16

  “Murder, fire, rape, and robbery!—it is capsized, stove in, sunk, burned, and destroyed I am! Captain, captain, we are carried aft here—Och, hubbaboo for Patrick Donnally!”

  There was no time to be lost; if any of the crew came aft we were dead men, so we tumbled down through the cabin skylight, men and beast, the hatch having been knocked off by a shot, and stowed ourselves away in the side berths. The noise on deck soon ceased—the cannon were again plied—gradually the fire slackened, and we could hear that the pirate had scraped clear and escaped. Some time after this the lieutenant commanding the cutter came down. Poor Mr Douglas! both Splinter and I knew him well. He sat down and covered face with his hands, while the blood oozed down between fingers. He had received a cutlass wound on the head in the attack. His right arm was bound up with his neckcloth, and he was very pale.

  “Steward, bring me a light.—Ask the doctor how many are killed and wounded; and—do you hear?—tell him to come to me when he is done forward, but not a moment sooner. To have been so mauled and duped by a buccanneer; and my poor boat’s crew—”

  Splinter groaned. He started—but at this moment the man returned again.

  “Thirteen killed, your honour, and fifteen wounded; scarcely one of us untouched.” The poor fellow’s own skull was bound round with a bloody cloth.

  “God help me! God help me! but they have died the death of men. Who knows what death the poor fellows in the boat have died!”—Here he was cut short by a tremendous scuffle on the ladder, down which an old quartermaster was trundled neck and crop into the cabin. “How now, Jones?”

  “Please your honour,” said the man, as soon as he had gathered himself up, and had time to turn his quid and smooth down his hair; but again the uproar was renewed, and Donnally was lugged in, scrambling and struggling between two seamen—”this here Irish chap, your honour, has lost his wits, if so be he ever had any, your honour. He has gone mad through fright.”

  “Fright be d——d!” roared Donnally; “no man ever frightened me; but as his honour was skewering them bloody thieves forward, I was boarded and carried aft by the devil, your honour—pooped by Beelzebub, by ——,” and he rapped his fist on the table until everything on it danced again. “There were four of them, yeer honour—a black one and two blue ones—and a piebald one, with four legs and a bushy tail—each with two horns on his head, for all the world like those on Father M’Cleary’s red cow—no, she was humbled—it is Father Clannachan’s, I mane—no, not his neither, for his was the parish bull; fait, I don’t know what I mane, except that they had all horns on their heads, and vomited fire, and had each of them a tail at his stern, twisting and twining like a conger eel, with a blue light at the end on’t.”

  “And dat’s a lie, if ever dere was one,” exclaimed Peter Mangrove, jumping from the ‘berth. “Look at me, you Irish tief, and tell me if I have a blue light or a conger eel at my stern!”

  This was too much for poor Donnally. He yelled out, “You’ll believe your own eyes now, yeer honour, when you see one o’ dem bodily before you! Let me go— let me go!” and, rushing up the ladder, he would, in all probability, have ended his earthly career in the salt sea, had his bullet-head not encountered the broadest part of the purser, who was in the act of descending, with such violence, that he shot him out of the companion several feet above the deck, as if he had been discharged from a culverin; but the recoil sent poor Donnally, stunned and senseless, to the bottom of the ladder. There was no standing all this; we laughed outright, and made ourselves known to Mr Douglas, who received us cordially, and in a week we were landed at Port Royal.

  CHAPTER VI.

  THE CRUISE OF THE SPARK.

  “Ours are the tears, though few, sincerely shed.”

  —The Corsair.

  THE ONLY other midshipman on board the cutter beside young Walcolm, whose miserable death we had witnessed, was a slight delicate little fellow, about fourteen years old, of the name of Duncan; he was the smallest boy of his age I ever saw, and had been badly hurt in repelling the attack of the pirate. His wound was a lacerated puncture in the left shoulder from a boarding-pike, but it appeared to be healing, kindly, and for some days we thought he was doing well. However, about five o’clock in the afternoon on which we made Jamaica, the surgeon accosted Mr Douglas as we were walking the deck together.

  “I fear little Duncan is going to slip through my fingers after all, sir.”

  “No!—I thought he had been better.”

  “So he was till about noon, when a twitching of the muscles came on, which I fear betokens lockjaw; he wavers, too, now and then—a bad sign of itself where there is a fretting wound.”

  We went below, where, notwithstanding the wind-sail that was let down close to where his hammock was slung, the heat of the small vessel was suffocating. The large coarse tallow candle in the purser’s lantern, that hung beside his shoulder, around which the loathsome cockroaches fluttered like moths in a summer evening, filled the between-decks with a rancid oily smell, and with smoke as from a torch, while it ran down and melted like fat before a fire. It cast a dull sickly gleam on the pale face of the brown-haired girlish-looking lad, as he lay in his narrow hammock. When we entered, an old quartermaster was rubbing his legs, which were jerking about like the limbs of a galvanised frog, while two of the boys held his arms, also violently convulsed. The poor little fellow was crying and sobbing most piteously, but made a strong effort to compose himself and “be a man” when he saw us.

  “This is so good of you, Mr Cringle!—you will take charge of my letter to my sister, I know you will? I say, Anson,” to the quartermaster, “do lift me up a little till I try and finish it.—It will be a sore heart to poor Sarah; she has no mother now, nor father, and aunt is not over kind;” and again he wept bitterly. “Confound this jumping hand, it won’t keep steady, all I can do.—I say, doctor, I shan’t die this time, shall I?”

  “I hope not, my fine little fellow.”

  “I don’t think I shall; I shall live to be a man yet, in spite of that bloody buccaneer’s pike—I know I shall.” God help me, the death-rattle was already in his throat, and the flame was flickering in the socket; even as he spoke the muscles of his neck stiffened to such a degree that I thought he was choked, but the violence of the convulsion quickly subsided. “I am done for, doctor!”—he could no longer open his mouth, but spoke through his clenched teeth—”I feel it now!—God Almighty receive my soul, and protect my poor sister!” The archenemy was indeed advancing to the final struggle, for he now gave a sudden and sharp cry, and stretched out his legs and arms, which instantly became as rigid as marble, and in his agony he turned his face to the side I stood on, but he was no longer sensible. “Sister,” he said with difficulty—”don’t let them throw me overboard; there are sharks here.”

  “Land on the lee-bow!” sang out the man at the mast-head. The common life sound would not have moved any of us in the routine of duty, but, bursting in under such circumstances, it made us all start as if it had been something unusual; the dying midshipman heard it, and said, calmly, “Land!—I will never see it.—But how blue all your lips look.—It is cold, piercing cold, and dark, dark.” Something seemed to rise in his throat, his features sharpened still more, and he tried to gasp, but his clenched teeth prevented him—he was gone.

  I went on deck with a heavy heart, and, on looking in the direction indicated, I beheld the towering Blue Mountain peak rising high above the horizon, even at the distance of fifty miles, with its outline clear and distinct against the splendid western sky, now gloriously illumined by the light of the set sun. We stood on under easy sail for the night, and next morning, when the day broke, we were off the east end of the magnificent island of Jamaica. The stupendous peak now appeared to rise close aboard of us, with a large solitary star sparkling on his forehead, and reared his forest-crowned summit high into the cold blue sky, impending over us in frowning magnificence, while the long dark range of the Blue Mountains, with their outlines
hard and clear in the grey light, sloped away on each side of him as if they had been the Giant’s shoulders. Great masses of white mist hung on their sides about half-way down, but all the valleys and coasts as yet slept in the darkness. We could see that the land-wind was blowing strong inshore, from the darker colour of the water, and the speed with which the coasters, only distinguishable by their white sails, slid along; while astern of us, out at sea, yet within a cable’s length, for we had scarcely shot beyond its influence, the prevailing trade-wind blew a smart breeze coming up strong to a defined line, beyond which and between it and the influence of the land-wind, there was a belt of dull lead-coloured sea, about half a mile broad, with a long heavy ground-swell rolling, but smooth as glass, and without even a ripple on the surface, in the midst of which we presently lay dead becalmed.

  The heavy dew was shaken in large drops out of the wet flapping sails, against which the reef-points pattered like hail as the vessel rolled. The decks were wet and slippery, and our jackets saturated with moisture; but we enjoyed the luxury of cold to a degree that made the sea-water when dashed about the decks, as they were being holystoned, appear absolutely warm. Presently all nature awoke in its freshness so suddenly that it looked like a change of scene in a theatre. The sun, as yet set to us, rose to the huge peak, and glanced like lightning on his summit, making it gleam like a ruby; presently the clouds on his shaggy ribs rolled upwards, enveloping his head and shoulders, and were replaced by the thin blue mists which ascended from the valleys, forming a fleecy canopy, beneath which appeared hill and dale, woods and cultivated lands, where all had been undistinguishable a minute before, and gushing streams burst from the mountain sides like gouts of froth, marking their course in the level grounds by the vapours they sent up. Then breeze-mill towers burst into light, and cattle-mills, with their cone-shaped roofs, and overseers’ houses, and water-mills, with the white spray falling from the wheels, and sugar-works, with long pennants of white smoke streaming from the boiling-house chimneys seaward in the morning wind. Immediately after, gangs of negroes were seen at work; loaded waggons, with enormous teams of fourteen to twenty oxen dragging them, rolled along the roads; long strings of mules, loaded with canes, were threading the fields; drogging vessels were seen to shove out from every cove; the morning song of the black fisherman was heard, while their tiny canoes, like black specks, started up suddenly on all sides of us, as if they had floated from the bottom of the sea; and the smiling scene burst at once, and as if by magic, on us, in all its coolness and beauty, under the cheering influence of the rapidly rising, sun. We fired a gun, and made the signal for a pilot; upon which a canoe, with three negroes in it, shoved off from a small schooner lying-to about a mile to leeward. They were soon alongside, when one of the three jumped on board. This was the pilot, a slave, as I knew; and I remember the time when, in my innocence, I would have expected to see something very squalid and miserable; but there was nothing of the kind, for I never in my life saw a more spruce salt-water dandy, in a small way. He was well dressed, according to a seaman’s notion—clean white trousers, check shirt with white lapels, neatly fastened at the throat with a black ribbon, smart straw hat; and altogether he carried an appearance of comfort—I was going to write independence—about him, that I was by no means prepared for. He moved about with a swaggering roll, grinning and laughing with the seamen.

  “I say, blackie,” said Mr Douglas.

  “John Lodge, massa, if you please, massa; blackie is not politeful, sir;” whereupon he showed his white teeth again.

  “Well, well, John Lodge, you are running us in too closely;” and the remark seemed seasonable enough to a stranger, for the rocks on the bold shore were now within half pistol-shot,

  “Mind your eye,” shouted old Anson. “You will have us ashore, you black rascal!”

  “You, sir, what water have you here?” sang out Mr Splinter.

  “Salt water, massa,” rapped out Lodge, fairly dumfounded by such a volley of questions. “You hab six fadom good here, massa;” but suspecting he had gone too far—”I take de Tonnant, big ship as him is, close to dat reef, sir, you might have jump ashore, so you need not frighten for your leetle dish of a hooker; beside, massa, my character is at ‘take, you know,” then another grin and bow.

  There was no use in being angry with the poor fellow, so he was allowed to have his own way until we anchored in the evening at Port Royal.

  The morning after we arrived, I went ashore with a boat’s crew to perform the magnanimous operation of cutting brooms; we pulled for Green Bay, under the guns of the Twelve Apostles—a heavy battery of twelve cannon, where there is a tombstone with an inscription, setting forth that the party over whom it was erected had been actually swallowed up in the great earthquake that destroyed the opposite town, but subsequently disgorged again—being, perchance, an unseemly morsel.

  We approached the beach—”Oars”—the men laid them in.

  “What sort of nuts be them, Peter Coamings?” said the coxswain to a new hand who had been lately impressed, and was now standing at the bow ready to fend off.

  Peter broke off one of the branches from the bush nearest him.

  “Smite my timbers, do the trees here bear shell-fish?”

  The tide in the Gulf of Mexico does not ebb and flow above two feet, except at the springs, and the ends of the drooping branches of the mangrove-trees, that here cover the shore, are clustered, within the wash of the water, with a small well-flavoured oyster. The first thing the seamen did, when they got ashore, was to fasten an oakum tail to the rump of one of the most lubberly of the cutter’s crew; they then gave him ten yards’ law, when they started in chase, shouting amongst the bushes, and switching each other like the veriest schoolboys. I had walked some distance along the beach, pelting the amphibious little creatures, half crab, half lobster, called soldiers, which kept shouldering their large claws, and running out and in their little burrows, as the small ripple twinkled on the sand in the rising sun, when two men-of-war’s boats, each with three officers in the stern, suddenly pulled round a little promontory that intercepted my view ahead. Being somewhat out of the line of my duty, so far from my boat, I squatted amongst the brushwood, thinking they would pass by; but, as the devil would have it, they pulled directly for the place where I was ensconced, beached their boats, and jumped on shore. “Here’s a mess,” thought I.

  I soon made out that one of the officers was Captain Pinkem of the Flash, and that the parties saluted each other with that stern courtesy which augured no good.

  “So, so, my masters, not enough of fighting on the coast of America, but you must have a little private defacing of God’s image amongst yourselves?”

  Pinkem spoke first. “Mr Clinch” (I now knew he addressed the first-lieutenant of the flag-ship),—”Mr Clinch, it is not too late to prevent unpleasant consequences; I ask you again, at the eleventh hour, will you make an apology?”

  He seemed hurried and fidgety in his manner; which rather surprised me, as I knew he was a seasoned hand in these matters, and it contrasted unfavourably with the calm bearing of his antagonist, who by this time had thrown his hat on the ground, and stood with one foot on the handkerchief that marked his position, the distance, twelve paces, having already been measured. By the by, his position was deucedly near in a line with the grey stone behind which I lay perdu; nevertheless, the risk I ran did not prevent me noticing that he was very pale, and had much the air of a brave man come to die in a bad cause. He looked upwards for a second or two, and then answered, slowly and distinctly, “Captain Pinkem, I now repeat what I said before; this rencontre is none of my seeking. You accuse me of having spoken slightingly of you seven years ago, when I was a mere boy. You have the evidence of a gallant officer that I did so; therefore I may not gainsay it; but of uttering the words imputed to me, I declare, upon my honour, I have no recollection.” He paused.

  “That won’t do, my fine fellow,” said Pinkem.

  “You are unreasonable,�
�� rejoined Clinch, in the same measured tone, “to expect further amende for uttering words which I have no conviction of having spoken; yet to any other officer in the service I would not hesitate to make a more direct apology, but you know your credit as a pistol-shot renders this impossible.”

  “Sorry for it, Mr Clinch—sorry for it.”

  Here the pistols were handed to the principals by their respective seconds. In their attitudes, the proficient and the novice were strikingly contrasted (by this time I had crept round so as to have a view of both parties, or rather, if the truth must be told, to be out of the line of fire). Pinkem stood with his side accurately turned towards his antagonist, so as to present the smallest possible surface; his head was, as it struck me, painfully slewed round, with his eye looking steadily at Clinch, over his right shoulder, whilst his arm was brought down close to his thigh, with the cock of the pistol turned outwards, so that his weapon must have covered his opponent by the simple raising of his arm below the elbow. Clinch, on the other hand, stood fronting him, with the whole breadth of his chest; holding his weapon awkwardly across his body, with both hands. Pinkem appeared unwilling to take him at such advantage, for, although violent and headstrong, and but too frequently the slave of his passions, he had some noble traits in his character.

  “Turn your feather-edge to me, Mr Clinch; take a fair chance, man.”

  The lieutenant bowed, and I thought would have spoken, but he was checked by “the fear of being thought to fear;” however, he took the advice, and in an instant the word was given—”Are you both ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then fire!”

  Clinch fired without deliberation. I saw him, for my eyes were fixed on him, expecting to see him fall. He stood firm, however, which was more than I did, as at the instant a piece of the bullion of an epaulet, at first taken for a pellet of baser metal, struck me sharply on the nose, and shook my equanimity confoundedly; at length I turned to look at Pinkem, and there he stood with his arm raised, and pistol levelled, but he had not fired. He stood thus whilst I might have counted ten, like a finger-post, then, dropping his hand, his weapon went off, but without aim, the bullet striking the sand near his feet, and down he came headlong to the ground. He fell with his face turned towards me, and I never shall forget the horrible expression of it. His healthy complexion had given place to a deadly blue, the eyes were wide open and straining in their sockets, the upper lip was drawn up, showing his teeth in a most frightful grin, the blood gushed from his mouth as if impelled by the strokes of a force-pump, while his hands griped and dug into the sand.