Tom Cringle's Log Read online

  “Well, Tom, since you are no longer dazzled, and see us all now, you had better get up, hadn’t you—you see mamma is waiting there to embrace you?”

  “Why, I think myself I had better; but when I broached-to so suddenly, I split my lower canvass, Mary, and I cannot budge until your mother lends me a petticoat.”

  “A what? you are crazy, Tom—”

  “Not a whit, not a whit, why I have split my—ahem. This is speaking plain, an’t it?”

  Away tripped the sylph-like girl, and in a twinkling re-appeared with the desired garment, which in a convulsion of laughter she slipped over my head as I sat on the floor; and having fastened it properly round my waist, I rose and paid my respects to my warm-hearted relations. But that petticoat—it could not have been the old woman’s, there could have been no such virtue in an old woman’s petticoat; no, no, it must either have been a charmed garment, or—or—Mary’s own; for from that hour I was a lost man, and the devoted slave of her large black eyes, and high pale forehead. “Oh, murder—you speak of the sun dazzling; what is it to the lustre of that same eye of yours, Mary!”

  In the evening I escorted the ladies to a ball (by the way, a West India ballroom being a perfect lantern, open to the four winds of heaven, is cooler, notwithstanding the climate, than a ball-room anywhere else), and a very gay affair it turned out to be, although I had more trouble in getting admittance than I bargained for, and was witness to as comical a row (considering the very frivolous origin of it, and the quality of the parties engaged in it) as ever took place even in that peppery country, where, I verily believe, the temper of the people, generous though it be in the main, is hotter than the climate, and that, God knows! is sudoriferous enough. I was walking through the entrance saloon with my fair cousin on my arm, stepping out like a hero to the opening crash of a fine military band, towards the entrance of the splendid ball-room filled with elegant company, brilliantly lighted up and ornamented with the most rare and beautiful shrubs and flowers, which no European conservatory could have furnished forth, and arched overhead with palm branches and a profusion of evergreens, while the polished floor, like one vast mirror, reflected the fine forms of the pale but lovely black-eyed and black-haired West Indian dames, glancing amidst the more sombre dresses of their partners, while the whole group was relieved by being here and there spangled with a rich naval or military uniform. As we approached, a constable put his staff across the doorway.

  “Beg pardon, sir, but you are not in full dress.”

  Now this was the first night whereon I had sported my lieutenant’s uniform, and with my gold swab on my shoulder, the sparkling bullion glancing in the corner of my eye at the very moment, my dress-sword by my side, gold buckles in my shoes, and spotless white trousers, I had, in my innocence, considered myself a deuced killing fellow, and felt proportionably mortified at this address.

  “No one can be admitted in trousers, sir,” said the man.

  “Shiver my timbers!” I could not help the exclamation, the transactions of the morning crowding on my recollection, “shiver my timbers! is my fate in this strange country to be for ever irrevocably bound up in a pair of breeches?”

  My cousin pinched my arm. “Hush, Tom; go home and get mamma’s petticoat.”

  The man was peremptory; and as there was no use in getting into a squabble about such a trifle, I handed my partner over to the care of a gentleman of the party, who was fortunately accoutred according to rule, and, stepping to my quarters, I equipped myself in a pair of tight nether integuments, and returned to the ball-room. By this time there was the devil to pay; the entrance saloon was crowded with military and naval men, high in oath, and headed by no less a person than a general officer, and a one-armed man, one of the chief civil officers in the place, and who had been a sailor in his youth. I was just in time to see the advance of the combined column to the door of the ballroom, through which they drove the picket of constables like chaff, and then halted. The one-armed functionary, a most powerful and very handsome man, now detached himself from the phalanx, and strode up to the advanced-guard of stewards clustered in front of the ladies, who had shrunk together into a corner of the room like so many frightened hares.

  The place being now patent to me, I walked up to comfort my party, and could see all that passed. The champion of the Excluded had taken the precaution to roll up the legs of his trousers, and to tie them tightly at the knee with his garters, which gave him the appearance of a Dutch skipper; and in all the consciousness of being now properly arrayed, he walked up to one of the men in authority—a small pot-bellied gentleman, and set himself to intercede for the attacking column, the head of which was still lowering at the door. But the little steward speedily interrupted him.

  “Why, Mr Singlefist, rules must be maintained, and let me see,” here he peered through his glass at the substantial supporters of our friend, “as I live, you yourself are inadmissible.”

  The giant laughed.

  “Damn the body, he must have been a tailor! Charge, my fine fellows, and throw the constables out of the window, and the stewards after them. Every man his bird; and here goes for my Cock Robin.” With that he made a grab at his Lilliputian antagonist, but missed him, as he slid away amongst the women like an eel, while his pursuer, brandishing his wooden arm on high, to which I now perceived for the first time that there was a large steel hook appended, exclaimed, in a broad Scotch accent, “Ah, if I had but caught the creature, I would have clapt this in his mouth, and played him like a salmon.”

  At this signal in poured the mass of soldiers and sailors; the constables vanished in an instant, the stewards were driven back upon the ladies; and such fainting and screaming, and swearing and threatening, and shying of cards, and fixing of time and place for a cool turn in the morning, it had never been my good fortune to witness before or since. “My wig!” thought I, “a precious country, where a man’s life may be periled by the fashion of the covering to his nakedness!”

  Next day Mr Fyall—who, I afterwards learned, was a most estimable man in substantials, although somewhat eccentric in small matters—called and invited me to accompany him on a cruise amongst some of the estates under his management. This was the very thing I desired; and three days afterwards I left my kind friends in Kingston, and set forth on my visit to Mr Fyall, who lived about seven miles from town.

  The morning was fine as usual, although about noon the clouds, thin and fleecy and transparent at first, but gradually settling down more dense and heavy, began to congregate on the summit of the Liguanea Mountains, which rise about four miles distant to a height of near 5000 feet, in rear of the town. It thundered, too, a little now and then in the same direction, but this was an everyday occurrence in Jamaica at this season; and as I had only seven miles to go, off I started in a gig of mine host’s, with my portmanteau well secured under a tarpauling, in defiance of all threatening appearances, crowding sail, and urging the noble roan that had me in tow close upon thirteen knots. I had not gone above three miles, however, when the sky in a moment changed from the intense glare of a tropical noontide to the deepest gloom, as if a bad angel had suddenly overshadowed us, and interposed his dark wings between us and the blessed sun; indeed, so instantaneous was the effect, that it reminded me of the withdrawing of the foot-lights in a theatre. The road now wound round the base of a precipitous spur from the Liguanea Mountains, which, instead of melting into the level country by gradual decreasing undulations, shot boldly out nearly a mile from the main range, and so abruptly, that it seemed mortised into the plain, like a rugged promontory running into a frozen lake. On looking up along the ridge of this prong, I saw the lowering mass of black clouds gradually spread out, and detach themselves from the summits of the loftier mountains, to which they had clung the whole morning, and begin to roll slowly down the hill, seeming to touch the tree tops, while along their lower edges hung a fringe of dark vapour, or rather shreds of cloud in rapid motion, that shifted about, and shot out and shortened lik
e streamers.

  As yet there was no lightning nor rain, and in the expectation of escaping the shower, as the wind was with me, I made more sail, pushing the horse into a gallop, to the great discomposure of the negro who sat beside me.

  “Massa, you can’t escape it, you are galloping into it; don’t massa hear de sound of de rain coming along against de wind, and smell de earthy smell of him like one new-made grave?”

  “The sound of the rain.” In another clime, long, long ago, I had often read at my old mother’s knee, “And Elijah said unto Ahab, there is a sound of abundance of rain, prepare thy chariot, and get thee down, that the rain stop thee not; and it came to pass, in the meanwhile, that the heaven was dark with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain.”

  I looked, and so it was; for in an instant a white sheet of the heaviest rain I had ever seen (if rain it might be called, for it was more like a waterspout) fell from the lower edge of the black cloud, with a strong rushing noise, that increased as it approached to a loud roar like that of a waterfall. As it came along, it seemed to devour the rocks and trees, for they disappeared behind the watery screen the instant it reached them. We saw it ahead of us for more than a mile coming along the road, preceded by a black line from the moistening of the white dust, right in the wind’s eye, and with such an even front, that I verily believe it was descending in bucketsful on my horse’s head, while as yet not one drop had reached me. At this moment the adjutant-general of the forces, Colonel F——, of the Coldstream Guards, in his tandem, drawn by two sprightly blood bays, with his servant, a light boy, mounted Creole fashion on the leader, was coming up in my wake at a spot where the road sank into a hollow, and was traversed by a watercourse already running knee-deep, although dry as a bone but the minute before.

  I was now drenched to the skin, the water pouring out in cascades from both sides of the vehicle, when, just as I reached the top of the opposite bank, there was a flash of lightning so vivid, accompanied by an explosion so loud and tremendous, that my horse, trembling from stem to stern, stood dead still; the dusky youth by my side jumped out, and buried his snout in the mud, like a porker in Spain nuzzling for acorns, and I felt more queerish than I would willingly have confessed to. I could have knelt and prayed. The noise of the thunder was a sharp ear-piercing crash, as if the whole vault of heaven had been made of glass, and had been shivered at a blow by the hand of the Almighty.

  It was, I am sure, twenty seconds before the usual roar and rumbling reverberation of the report from the hills, and among the clouds, was heard.

  I drove on, and arrived just in time to dress for dinner; but I did not learn till next day, that the flash which paralyzed me, had struck dead the colonel’s servant and leading horse, as he ascended the bank of the ravine, by this time so much swollen, that the body of the lad was washed off the road into the neighbouring gully, where it was found, when the waters subsided, entirely covered with sand.

  I found the party congregated in the piazza round Mr Fyall, who was passing his jokes, without much regard to the feelings of his guests, and exhibiting as great a disregard of the common civilities and courtesies of life as can well be imagined. One of the party was a little red-faced gentleman, Peregrine Whiffle, Esquire, by name, who, in Jamaica parlance, was designated an extraordinary master in Chancery; the overseer of the pen, or breeding farm, in the great house, as it is called, or mansion-house, in which Mr Fyall resided, and a merry, laughing, intelligent, round, red-faced man; he was either Fyall’s head clerk, or a sort of first-lieutenant; these personages and myself composed the party. The dinner itself was excellent, although rather of the rough and round order; the wines and food intrinsically good; but my appetite was not increased by the exhibition of a deformed, bloated, negro child, about ten years old, which Mr Fyall planted at his elbow, and, by way of practical joke, stuffed to repletion with all kinds of food and strong drink, until the little dingy brute was carried out drunk.

  The wine circulated freely, and by-and-by Fyall indulged in some remarkable stories of his youth—for he was the only speaker—which I found some difficulty in swallowing, until at length, on one thumper being tabled, involving an impossibility, and utterly indigestible, I involuntarily exclaimed, “By Jupiter!”

  “You want any ting, massa?” promptly chimed in the black servant at my elbow, a diminutive, kiln-dried old negro.

  “No,” said I, rather caught

  “Oh, me tink you call for Jupiter.”

  I looked in the baboon’s face—”Why, if I did, what then?”

  “Only me Jupiter, at massa sarvice, dat all.”

  “You are; no great shakes of a Thunderer, eh? and who is that tall square man standing behind your master’s chair?”

  “Daddy Cupid, massa.”

  “And the old woman who is carrying away the dishes in the piazza?”

  “Mammy Weenus.”

  “Daddy Cupid and Mammy Weenus—Shade of Homer!”

  Jupiter, to my surprise, shrunk from my side, as if he had received a blow, and the next moment I could hear him communing with Venus in the piazza.

  “For true, dat leetle man-of-war buccra must be Obeah man; how de debil him come to sabé dat it was stable-boy Homer who broke de candle shade on massa right hand, dat one wid de piece broken out of de edge?” and here he pointed towards it with his chin—a negro always points with his chin.

  I had never slept on shore out of Kingston before; the night season in the country in dear old England, we all know, is usually one of the deepest stillness—here it was anything but still;—as the evening closed in, there arose a loud humming noise, a compound of the buzzing, and chirping, and whistling, and croaking of numberless reptiles and insects, on the earth, in the air, and in the water. I was awakened out of my first sleep by it, not that the sound was disagreeable, but it was unusual; and every now and then a beetle, the size of your thumb, would bang in through the open window, cruise round the room with a noise like a humming-top, and then dance a quadrille with half-a-dozen bats; while the fire-flies glanced like sparks, spangling the folds of the muslin curtains of the bed. The croak of the tree-toad, too, a genteel reptile, with all the usual lovable properties of his species, about the size of the crown of your hat, sounded from the neighbouring swamp like some one snoring in the piazza, blending harmoniously with the nasal concert got up by Jupiter, and some other heathen deities, who were sleeping there almost naked, excepting the head, which every negro swathes during the night with as much flannel and as many handkerchiefs as he can command. By the way, they all slept on their faces—I wonder if this will account for their flat noses.

  Next morning we started at daylight, cracking along at the rate of twelve knots an hour in a sort of gig, with one horse in the shafts, and another hooked on abreast of him to a sort of studdingsail-boom, or outrigger, and followed by three mounted servants, each with a led horse and two sumpter mules.

  In the evening we arrived at an estate under Mr Fyall’s management, having passed a party of maroons immediately before. I never saw finer men—tall, strapping fellows, dressed exactly as they should be and the climate requires; wide duck trousers, over these a loose shirt, of duck also, gathered at the waist by a broad leathern belt, through which, on one side, their short cutlass is stuck, while on the other hangs a leathern pouch for ball; and a loose thong across one shoulder, supports on the opposite hip a large powder-horn and haversack. This, with a straw hat, and a short gun in their hand, with a sling to be used on a march, completes their equipment—in better keeping with the climate than the padded coats, heavy caps, tight cross-belts, and ponderous muskets of our regulars. As we drove up to the door, the overseer began to bawl, “Boys, boys!” and kept blowing a dog-call. All servants in the country in the West Indies, be they as old as Methuselah, are called boys. In the present instance, half-a-dozen black fellows forthwith appeared to take our luggage, and attend on “massa” in other respects. The great man was as austere to the poor overseer as if he had been g
uilty of some misdemeanour, and after a few short crabbed words, desired him to get supper, “do you hear?”

  The meat consisted of plantation fare—salted fish, plantains, and yams, and a piece of goat mutton. Another “observe,”—a South-Down mutton, after sojourning a year or two here, does not become a goat exactly, but he changes his heavy warm fleece, and wears long hair; and his progeny after him, if bred on the hot plains, never assume the wool again. Mr Fyall and I sat down, and then in walked four mutes, stout young fellows, not over well dressed, and with faces burnt to the colour of brick-dust. They were the bookkeepers, so called because they never see a book, their province being to attend the negroes in the field, and to superintend the manufacture of sugar and rum in the boiling and distilling houses.