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“’Twas off the Wash––the sun went down––the sea looked black and grim, |
Past a September noon. The great canopy of dark, murky clouds fell lower and lower, until they nearly touched the earth, wrapping as in a blanket the single cocoa-nut-tree on the crag, and shutting out the light and air of heaven as they settled over the noxious lagoon, the mangrove thickets, and pure inlet. The sea-birds came screaming in from seaward, fluttering their wide-spread wings in the sultry atmosphere, and alighting on the smooth rocks, where they furled their pinions and put their heads together. The flying-fish no longer skimmed over the waves, and the dolphin and shark sank deep down in the blue water, or lay still and quiet beside the coral groves. The rolling, swelling ocean of the tropic, with its glassy, greasy surface unruffled by the faintest air, rolled heavily on until it struck the coral ledge, when, with a dull, heavy roar, it broke over in creamy foam, and came sluggishly in to the sandy beach. There the tiny waves lashed the shelly strand, and all was still again. No sun; no breeze; and even the birds, and serpents, and insects gasped for breath. The fish below the sea, the animated nature above, and the very leaves and vines of the forests and thickets knew what was brewing in the great vacuum around.
Slowly and painfully the man in the chapel regained his feet, and with the child by the hand, moved on to the farthest corner by the rude altar, where he sank down again, and, clasping the boy to his heart, waited in breathless awe. As if the powder and flames had not done their destructive work, the wrath of heaven was to be poured out over the devoted den of the pirates.
Then came a bellowing roar as a current of wind swept over the sea, cutting a pathway in the blue water, and scooping it up in an impalpable mist, hurrying on to the low beach of the island, and tearing the sand and shells up in heaps––and then a lull. Now, as if all the demons of winds had let loose their cavernous lungs from the 167 four quarters of the earth, and like the shocks of artillery, volley upon volley, came the hurricane. The sea became one boiling, seething, hissing surface of foam, pressed and flattened by the weight of the tempest, which laid the black rocks bare on the ledge, and drove the water into both mouths of the inlet, until, with a crashing shock, it met in the basin, and broke over and over the cove, and high up the wall of rocks on the other side. Two or three streams of whirlwind meeting, too, over the island, drove the lagoon hither and thither, catching up the white pond-lilies by their long stems, twisting off the dense thickets of mangroves by the roots, burrowing holes in the sandy beds of the cactus, and shearing off their flat, thorny leaves and needle points by the acre together; then a rushing whirl around the cocoa-nuts, bowing their tufted tops at first till they nearly touched the earth, when, the stout trunks snapping like glass, they would go pitching and tossing from base to crown, careering and dancing aloft, borne away with sand and mangrove, cactus, flowers, and sticks, into the flying clouds before the hurricane. Then another lull; and from the opposite direction again thundered the terrible breath of the demons, sweeping thousands of sea-birds, with broken pinions, screaming amid the gale, hurling them against the crag, stripping the feathers from their crushed carcasses, and in a moment burying them a foot deep in clouds of sand. No more pauses or lulls now in the hurtling tempest; but with a steady, tremendous roar, which made the earth tremble, the rocks quake, and laid every vestige of vegetation flat to the ground, it came on mightier and mightier, and fiercer and fiercer, with black masses of never-ending clouds sweeping close down like dark midnight, as if heaven and earth had come together. All through the gloomy day and through the night this elemental war, with its legions of careering demons, continued to lash the sea and smite the land; until, as if satiated with vengeance, the clouds belched forth in red lightning, vomiting out peal upon peal of awful thunder as a parting salute, and then, moderating down to a hard gale from another quarter, broke away. The blue sky appeared, and the glorious sun once more came up in his majesty over the distant hills of Cuba.
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“A weary weed, tossed to and fro, |
With the boy clasped to his heart, the doctor sat beside the altar of the chapel during all the direful strife without, shielding his little charge from the clouds of fine sand and rubbish that every few minutes came swirling within the temple, dashing the padre’s candlesticks into battered lumps of brass on the pavement, and tearing to atoms the votive offerings hung around the walls by the pirates. But, as if in mercy to the trustful souls lying there, the Virgin Mary still looked down in sweet pity upon them, and the little chapel stood unharmed.
When at last, however, the hurricane’s back was broken, and Æolus had reined up his maddened chargers and curbed their flying wings, and when all the demons of the wind had gone moaningly back to their caverns in the clouds, the doctor arose, and with the boy beside him, knelt devoutly before the altar while he uttered a fervent prayer of thanksgiving.
“Come, my Henri, now we may go out and see if we can find something to eat and drink. You are weak and hungry, my poor little boy; but you shall not suffer much longer.”
That strong man, with the heart of a gentle woman, had no thought of how ill, and famished, and thirsty he himself was from the terrible torture he had endured. No, he only thought of the child who had saved him.
In front of the chapel the sand and bushes were piled up in ridgy heaps, the coral wall around the cemetery had been thrown down, while the flat head-stones over the pirates’ graves had disappeared entirely. Not so, however, with the white slabs near by where those poor doomed women were lying; for the hurricane had spared their tombs, and a pall of pure white sand was sprinkled evenly over their remains. Bending over them was the trunk of the cocoa-nut, with 169 its top stripped and its leafless branches quivering in the wind; while from below them streamed out the long, thin green silk rope which had so often served Captain Brand, the pirate, for his private executions. Near at hand lay the trestle on which the doctor had been stretched––caught by the base of the cocoa-nut column, and half buried in sand––while the cruel strips of raw-hide which had lashed the victim down were tied and twisted into a maze of complicated knots by the nimble fingers of the winds.
The doctor started, and his half-closed eyes shot out gleams of anger as he beheld the unconscious implements designed for his torturing murder; and leaving the child at the doorway to the chapel, he sallied out, detached the rope, loosened the trestle from its sandy bed, and placed them in a corner of the chapel.
Then carefully picking his way, with the boy in his great arms, over the trees and débris which obstructed the pathway, he speedily reached the site on which had stood the sheds of the “Centipede’s” crew. Fire, water, and wind had done their work effectually, though the fire had partially spared the detached storehouse and shed which he had shared with the infamous padre. All else was a ruin of loose blocks of stone, broken tiles, nearly buried in banks of sand. From a well in the once busy court-yard, and which had also escaped the devouring elements, the doctor drew a bucket or two of water, in which he slaked the boy’s thirst and then his own, and afterward poured water over their bodies. Then, from a still smouldering beam which puffed out at intervals a thin curl of smoke from beneath one of the sheds, he lit a fire in the court-yard, while from the wreck of the storeroom he succeeded in rescuing some hard biscuit and a ham. This last he tore in shreds, and placing them on sticks before the fire, they were thus enabled to make a hearty meal, first providing for the wants of the child, however––soaking the biscuit for him, as if it were his first duty on earth. Again raising the boy in his arms, he passed from the ruined sheds and bent his steps toward Captain Brand’s former dwelling. The road was heaped with shells and sand, strewed with shoals of dead fish and wounded or dying birds, while the wreck of a boat, mingled with the timbers and planks of the jetty to the basin, were lying pell-mell on the beach of the little cove. Casting his eyes around in search of the once spacious dwelling, with its vaults, veranda, and saloon, he could hardly at first trace a vestige of the structure. The powder, more destructive even than the hurricane, had tossed walls and building into a confused heap of rubbish; then came the wind and sand on top of the rocks which had tumbled down by the concussion of the first explosion, and then the water, packing all together as if no habitation had ever existed there. The doctor walked slowly around until he came to the angle where the kitchen once was, and there, three fourths hidden beneath a mass of 170 blackened stones and charred timber, peered forth the white skeleton of a human being. The flesh had been seared and burned from the face and skull by the instantaneous flash of the powder, and there lay the remains of Babette, whitely bleached, as if she had been thrown a lifeless corpse on the sea-beach. A few yards below this frightful spectacle lay a number of shattered boxes and trunks, then a confused bundle of clothes, and a sandy saturated collection of kitchen utensils and crockery. Yes, the poor dumb woman, the creature and witness of many a cruel scene, ignorant or uncertain of the warning given her by the master she loved, had fallen another tribute to his long list of victims.
The doctor only waited long enough to select a few necessary articles from the heterogeneous heap before him, and then, with the child still clinging contentedly to his shoulder, he returned to the chapel.
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“Good heaven, befriend that little boat, |
The land wind sighed and murmured; the sea-breeze wafted its rustling influence over the waves; the long swells broke over the ledge; the inlet flowed pure and limpid; and the gulls and sea-mews floated gracefully over the reef, as if a hurricane had never poured its baneful wrath upon it or the lonely island.
Day by day and week by week, the man and boy, getting each hour stronger and better, worked and worked. He with his great arms hewing and sawing, and the child attending upon him like a shadow. By great toil and exertion the doctor had succeeded in placing some of the timbers of the jetty together as launching-ways, and on the cradle he had laid the wreck of the old boat. Then, with an old saw and some tools he found near the site of the mat sheds by the cove, he began to build the frail ark which was to carry him and the child from the hated island. From the storehouse, too, he obtained plenty of provisions to supply their wants, and old sails and rope he found in abundance. Babette’s collection of worldly wealth provided them with linen and clothing, together with utensils for eating and drinking; and he had made their dwelling in the little chapel clean and habitable. Here they slept by night on an old sail, and soundly too, the sleep of repentance and innocence. With the early morning the man and the boy arose, and took their way to the cove. The little fellow was clean and tidy now, dressed in a little loose calico frock, and a queer contrivance of an old bonnet fashioned out of Babette’s gear, and on his feet were a pair of little canvas slippers, stitched for him by his protector. After a bath in the basin of the inlet the fire was kindled, and the simple breakfast prepared. Then, while the strong man hewed, and sawed, and hammered beneath a temporary awning which covered the open workshop, the boy would pick up shells along the cove, or with a little rod and line, seated on a flat rock near by, jerk out fish from the basin to 174 serve for dinner. Sometimes he would wander about in search of nails and spikes for the boat, or gather sticks for the fire, but never out of hail, and never beyond the watchful eyes of his friend. Yes, those watchful, kind eyes followed his slightest movements; and while the hammer was going in vigorous blows on the planks, or the axe chipping away a timber, his pleasant voice sang Creole songs to the child, or encouraged his innocent prattle. A loaded musket, which, with some ammunition, he had dug out from the wreck of his old quarters, stood leaning against an upright post under the shade, and woe to the man or beast that might have dared to approach the boy! In the burning heat of the tropical day the labor ceased, and the child either lay on his back on the soft sand beneath the awning, kicking up his little legs, watching the small gulls as they skimmed across the basin, or, with his brown curly head resting on the doctor’s knees, slept sweetly. Happy and contented he was, too, with the return of health and strength; and if his budding memory looked back to her he had lost, and the recollection of his faithful Banou, it was only for a moment, and, like a childish dream, it passed away.
BUILDING THE BOAT.
Every evening at sunset, when the work was done for the day, the doctor, with Henri in his arms and the musket on his shoulder, would climb the crag, and peer all around the island; but never a sail did he see from the hour the “Centipede” spread her canvas, while he lay helplessly bound on the trestle with the green noose around his neck. As the twilight faded, the sole human occupants of the island returned to the chapel, and when they had said a simple prayer, kneeling before the Virgin, they laid themselves down on their canvas bed to rest till the dawn. Many a silent hour in the watches of the tedious night did the doctor lie awake, while the cool sweet breath of the child fanned his cheek as he lay nestling beside him, pondering and wondering on the fate of his charge. He knew absolutely nothing about his history save that he had been pitched overboard from the brig the pirates were robbing; but what was the name or nation of the vessel, where from, or whither bound, he was in utter ignorance. He had questioned the leader Gibbs on that occasion after the chase by the corvette, when he had lopped off the brute’s leg; but, what with suffering and drink, the ruffian had either forgotten the brig’s name, or feigned to, and all he could impart was the belief that she was an English trader. Even from the boy, too, the doctor could elicit nothing of importance, though day by day he tried every means of leading the child’s mind back to the past, but always with the same result.
“Oui, ma chère mama! Bon Banou!” and “Ma petite cousine, Rosalie!” These were the only words the little fellow had to link his fate with the future, and even they became fainter and fainter on his mind and tongue as the time passed on. With this delicate web 175 around the destiny of the child, and that he spoke French, and had evidently been tenderly nurtured, the doctor was forced to be content.
Well, so the days and nights went by, and so the work went on, and the little ark began to assume a wholesome look, and to be capable of plowing the distant main. Then, when she was planked up, with a gunwale on, and half-decked over forward, she was calked, and the seams payed with pitch. When all ready for launching, early one morning the doctor and the boy went gayly down to the cove. There, as the first golden rays of the rising sun shot athwart the inlet, Henri stood up in the bows, and with a large pearl-shell of pure spring water, he waved his tattered bonnet round his curly locks, and with childish delight, as the vessel began to move, he emptied the shell of its sparkling treasure, shouting, as she slid off the ways into the basin, “Ma petite cousine Rosalie!” The builder, too, took off his hat and shouted, in his deep bass, till the rocks gave back the echo of “Rosalie! Rosalie!”
Thus was the ark launched and christened by her captain and crew, and there she rode on the basin, a little pinnace of about ten tons, which had been once used to carry anchors, chains, and stores about the harbor. A week or two more, and she was fitted with a single mast, stepped well in the bows, for a jib and one square lug-sail. Then ballast in bags of sand was laid along her keelson, and a couple of breakers of fresh water got on board, together with a quantity of cooked salt meat and hard biscuit stowed away under the half-deck forward––where, too, was a cozy little nest of spare canvas, with an oakum pillow, for the boy! Yes, there lay the good ship “Rosalie,” outward bound, with sails bent and gear rove, cargo on board, and waiting for a wind.
Meanwhile the doctor had tried her under sail, and satisfied himself that every thing worked well, and that she was in proper trim. Then he moored her within a fathom from the shore, and waited for a moon to light him on his voyage. Whither?
Carefully, too––like one who had passed a lifetime on the ocean, from the China Seas to the broad Atlantic, under the suns of the tropics as well as in the dim gloom of high latitudes––the doctor studied the clouds and watched their course, noting the flight of the birds in the air and the track of fish in the sea. At last the trade breezes began to blow regularly and steadily; the land winds, too, in the gray of the morning, fluttered timidly away out to sea, and the round pearly moon shone bright and mellow over rock and water.
“To-morrow, my brave boy, we shall sail away from the island. Ah! you clap your hands, eh? Yes, we shall go to find mamma!” This was said as man and child stood for the last time on the lofty crag, while the former ranged his dark eyes scrutinizingly around the horizon. Nothing in sight!
Once more to their chapel of refuge, where, for the first time in all their association, putting the child to sleep by himself, the doctor sat down on the trestle by the entrance, and, lighted by the brilliant moon, he caught up the tangled mazes of the hide net which had bound him, and sedulously applied himself to a task before him.
Any one who has seen the effect produced by a violent gale upon the tattered shreds of a shivered main-top-sail, bound up into the most tortuous knots that it is possible to conceive of, and so hard and solid that you might saw the canvas balls in slices like boards, may form some idea of the task the doctor had imposed upon himself to loosen the hide strands tied together by the furious fingers of the hurricane. Patiently and quietly, with no sign of temper, he applied himself to the work, and with nothing but a sharp-pointed spike to aid his hands, he began to unravel, bit by bit, the laced knots and bunches of raw-hide, without ever cutting a strand, until, as the moon sank glimmering down, the tangled mass lay in clear coils beside him––though in several pieces, where it had been severed by the teeth of that little mouse purring behind the altar––and the task was done. Then raising the trestle, he bore it within the altar, and with the now unraveled coil of hide, and the softer silk rope for a pillow, he again stretched himself upon what once had been his bed of torture.
For what possible object all this labor had been undertaken, or for what future purpose––vague they must have been––no one but the persevering man who did it can tell; and there he lay, no sound coming from his compressed lips till the day dawned. Then he arose, and, kneeling over the sleeping child, he again solemnly repeated the oath he had before taken in his hut––
“Sleeping or waking, on land or sea, I devote the remainder of my wretched life to returning this lost child to his mother. So help me God!”
The little boy stirred, as if the angels and the sweet Virgin were whispering their protecting power over him, and, with a smile dawning upon his rosy, dimpled cheeks, he raised the lids from his bright hazel eyes, and put his fat round arms around the doctor’s neck. If two great drops fell upon that upturned innocent little face from the dark full eyes bending over him, they were not tears of sorrow! Oh, no! It was the dew of hope and trustfulness falling from the soul of a repentant sinner relying upon an all-wise Providence.
“Come, my Henri, say your little prayer of the morning, and we will go.” The man had taught the child that little prayer which he himself had learned at his mother’s knee.
Up again to the crag, and down to the shelly margin of the shore; and a long look the man gave at the ruin of shed and den, as he gently placed the child on a sand-bag in the stern-sheets of the ark. 177 Then he cast off the rope which held the vessel to the hated strand, hoisted the sail, and, as she bubbled along the inlet with the first sigh of the land wind, he stood at the helm with his bare head lighted up by the beams of the rising sun, and his lips moved in prayer.
On, noiselessly through the Tiger’s Trap sailed the little pinnace till she bowed her rugged cutwater in the yielding waves, and with her square lug-sail swelling gently to the freshening breeze, she held her course to sea. I question much if the stanch brigantine, named the “Centipede,” which had preceded her through this tiger’s gorge, with all the ruffianly crew that manned her, and their villainous captain on her quarter-deck, stood half the chance of a prosperous voyage as the tiny ark, called the “Rosalie,” which followed, with her noble, brave commander, and his weak and boyish mate. Who can tell?
END OF PART I.
PART II.
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“Ever drifting, drifting, drifting |
It was in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and twenty-two, and in the broad and commodious harbor of Kingston, a great mercantile haven, crowded with shipping from all parts of the commercial globe; landlocked by reef and ridge, with the rocks and heights crowned by frowning batteries of heavy cannon; while beyond were spread the lower and upper town, in masses of low two-story buildings, with piazzas, bright green jalousies, stately palm, tamarind, and cocoa-nut-trees waving above them. At the mouth of the harbor strait, where stands Fort Augusta, lay a magnificent double-banked American frigate, with a broad blue swallow-tailed pennant at her main, standing out stiff, like a dog-vane, from the lofty mast, as the ship rode to the strong sea-breeze.
The stays and rigging came down from trucks, cross-trees, and tops in straight black lines, from the great length of lower masts and enormously square yards fore and aft; and from side to side, till they met the long majestic hull and taper head-booms; while below were two rows of ports, with the guns run out and the brass tompions gleaming in their muzzles. The awnings were spread in one flat extended sheet of white cotton canvas from bowsprit to taffrail, and from the wide-spread lower booms at the fore-chains boats were riding by their painters. Within a cable’s length of the frigate’s black quarter lay a low rakish schooner, like a minnow alongside a whale, with a thin little coach-whip streaming from her main-mast head, a long brass gun amidships, and looking as trig and tidy as a French maid beside her portly mistress.
The bell struck in twin notes eight on board the frigate, echoed 180 back from the pigmy schooner in a faint, double succession of tinkles; the whistles resounded from deck to deck in ear-splitting notes, surging and chirruping all together, and then suddenly ceasing with a rattling beat of a drum and a short bellow of “Grog, ho!”
Between the guns of the main deck, and about the spar-deck battery forward of the main-mast, sat five hundred lusty sailors on the white decks around their mess-cloths, bolting hot pea soup after their grog, and chatting and laughing in a devil-may-care sort of a strain, as if the grub was good and the timbers sound, as they were, of the stanch frigate beneath them. No noise, no confusion, but just as polite and courteous, in their honest, seamanlike way, as half a legion of French dancing-masters, they whacked off the salt pork before them with their sheath-knives, munching the flinty biscuit, and all as happy and careless of the past and future as clams at high water. Ay, there they clustered, those five hundred sailors, in their snowy duck trowsers and white, coarse linen frocks, with the blue collars laid square back over their broad shoulders, exposing their bronzed and hairy throats, wagging their jaws, and ready at any moment, at the tap of the drum, day or night, to spring to the guns, and make the battery dance a jig as the solid iron food went amid sheets of flame toward a foe. Yes, and ready, too, in the gentle breeze or the howling tempest, to leap at the shrill pipe of the whistle from the busy deck or their snug hammocks, and, like so many monkeys, jump up the shrouds, lie out on the enormous yards while the frigate was plunging bows under in the tumultuous seas, grasp the writhing canvas in their sinewy paws, and wrap it up close and tight in the hempen gaskets. Man-of-war sailors, for battle, or gale, or spree, every one of them.
On board that little consort near were about forty more of the same sort, only older, more bronzed, and more deliberate and methodical in manner, sipping their pea pottage after blowing away the steam, cutting their pork after much reflection, and cracking their biscuit tranquilly. Their conversation, too, was slow and dignified, each word well considered before it came out, and never interrupting one another in a yarn, as did the younger harum-scarum chaps in the big ship near. But yet those weather-beaten old sons of Neptune, who had each one of them seen sights that would make your hair stand on end to think of, could handle that schooner when her low deck was buried waist-deep to the combings of the main hatch in angry water, and make that Long Tom amidships there spin round on its pivot, and never threw away idly one of its solid globular messengers. Ay, trust them for that.
Then honor to them all, those gallant tars who have fought the battles of our country by sea and lake, and upheld those Stars and 183 Stripes until they are respected to the uttermost ends of the earth! Glory to them, ye wise legislators, who sit in council upon the nation’s wealth and grandeur! Think of the fearless arms that have shielded your otherwise unprotected shores when circled in a ring of dreadful fire from the guns of a haughty foe.
THE UNITED STATES FRIGATE “MONONGAHELA.”
And you, too, ye rich traders! whose valuable cargoes roll hither and thither over the trackless deep, cared for by those toiling tars who fight and bleed for the flag that waves o’er your treasure––in stinging gale, with frozen fingers, or under burning suns, with panting breasts––think of them when your noble ships come gallantly into your superb ports, and unlade their floating mines of wealth into your spacious warehouses, while you in your lordly mansions sip your wine! Think of those arms grasping the shivering sail in the mighty tempest, in the black night, and the coarse fare they eat, the sometimes putrid water they drink, and the hard beds they lie upon, while you are reposing on downy pillows with your wives and little ones beside you! Ah! take pity on the sailor, and scatter your shining gold over him in his distress.
When the time comes, as come it may, when the cannon of a hostile fleet are thundering at your ports; when your lumbering craft are flying before the rapacious grasp of quick-heeled cruisers, and fiery bombs are hissing through the pure air, bursting in your marble palaces and blasting your stores of wealth to dust, then you will turn with blanched faces to the sea, and wonder why you have so long forgotten the noble hearts and stalwart arms that once were thrown around you. But not before.
On the flush quarter-deck of the frigate, by the raised signal lockers abaft, stood a bronzed old quarter-master, a spy-glass resting on his arm, through which every minute he peered around the harbor, giving an eye, too, occasionally to the half-hour glass, whose sands dribbled steadily into the lower bulb on the locker beside him.
What cared he––no wife or child to cheer him! No cares save but to see that the ensign did not roll foul of the halyards, that the broad pennant blew out straight, that the half-hour glass did not need turning, and that no boat approached the frigate without his reporting it to the officer of the watch. Naught else save, perhaps, whether the other old quarter-master, Charley Holmes, down below there on the gun-deck, had wiped from his lips the moisture of the midday grog, and would be up in time to take the relief while the pea soup was warm. Nothing else.
The lieutenant of the watch briskly paced the solid deck, scrubbed white as milk with lime-juice and molasses, the even seams between the planks glistening like the strands of a girl’s raven tresses as his profane and rapid feet pressed upon them. What thought he in his careless walk, with the gleaming bunch of bullion on his right 184 shoulder, sword by his side, white trowsers, and gilt eagle buttons on his navy-blue coat?
He was thinking how his pittance of pay would support, in a scrimpy way, his poor mother and sister, who looked unto him as their only hope and refuge. And he thought, too, as he tramped that noble deck, made glorious by many a battle and victory in which he had borne a humble part, that his rich and powerful country would eventually reward him with increased pay and promotion. Were the single dollar which lay alone in his trowsers pocket, and the light mist which arose off there beyond the Apostles’ Battery, opposite Port Royal Harbor, an evidence of one or a sign of the last aspiration? We hope not; but we shall see.[*]
Three or four midshipmen, too, pranced over that frigate’s white quarter-deck, on the port side, in their blue jackets and duck trowsers. Little gay madcaps they were, scarcely well into their teens, with little glittering toasting-forks of dirks dangling at their sides, and ready for any lark or mischief.
And what thought those boyish imps of reefers? Did they trace the flight of that tropic man-of-war bird, sailing high up in the heavens, heading seaward, away into the distant future, through clouds and sunshine, rain and storm? And did they think, as they fluttered along the deck, that their own career might lead them in that direction, toward the star of promotion which shone so brightly near at hand, and was never reached; or else, by a chance shot, to come tumbling down with a crippled pinion, and hobble out their lives on shore? No. Those gay young blades, whose mothers were dreaming and sighing for them, had no reflections of that kind. They were chattering about the little frolic they had on their last liberty day, when the captain ordered them off to the frigate at sunset, and planning another for the week to come. Happy little scamps, let them dance their careless thoughts away!
“Two bells, sir,” said the quarter-master to the officer of the watch.
“Very good! Young gentlemen, tell the boatswain to turn the hands to, and have the barge manned. Let the first lieutenant and the marine officer know that the commodore is going to leave the ship. There, no larking on the quarter-deck, Mr. Mouse!”
This last command was addressed to a tiny youngster who was hardly big enough to go without pantalettes, much less to wear a jacket and order half a hundred huge sailors about, any one of whom was old enough to be his great-grandfather. But yet that small lad did it, and could steer a boat, too, or fly about like a ribbon in a high wind up there in the mizzen-top, while the men on the yard were taking the last reef in the top-sail.
“Go down to the cabin, sir, and let the commodore and his friend know the boat is ready.”
Down the ladder skipped Mr. Mouse, and while he was gone, the guard, in their white summer uniform and cross-belts, stood at ease, resting on their muskets on the quarter-deck, eight side-boys and the boatswain at the starboard gangway, with the first lieutenant and the officer of the watch standing near.
Presently there came up from the after cabin hatchway a fine, handsome man, in the very prime of life, in cocked hat, full-dress coat, a pair of gleaming epaulets, sword by his hip, and his nether limbs cased in white knee-breeches, silk stockings, and pumps. The one who followed him was apparently a much older man, with grizzled locks, a dark, stern face, and without epaulets. The first raised his hat as he stepped on the quarter-deck––not a thread of silver was seen in his dark hair––and then both bowed to the officers, who saluted them as they moved toward the gangway. The boatswain piped, the marines presented arms, the drum gave three quick rolls, and the commodore went over the gangway, preceded by his companion.
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“What though when storms our bark assail, |
The barge left the side of the frigate, a broad blue pennant with white stars on a staff at her bow, with fourteen handsome sailors to man her, all in clean white frocks and trowsers, with straw hats and flowing black ribbons around them, on which was stamped in gold letters, “Monongahela.”
The double bank of white ash oars flashed in the rippling waves of the harbor as the barge was urged over the water, the current seething and buzzing under her bows, and bubbling into her wake as she flew on toward the town. In a mahogany box at the stern sat a bushy-whiskered coxswain, whose body swayed to the stroke of the oars, while his hand grasped the brass tiller as he steered amid the shipping. The commodore had settled himself down under the boat’s awning on the snow-white covered cushions in the stern-sheets, and, with one foot resting on the elegant ash grating beneath, he began to talk to the grave gentleman who sat opposite to him.
“It is many a long year since I last visited this superb harbor, but I remember it as if it were yesterday. You never were here before, I think? No? Well, if any of the old set I once knew, when I was first lieutenant of the old ‘Scourge,’ are yet alive, we shall have a pleasant time!”
“One fine fellow,” went on the commodore, “I know is. His name is Piron. I had a note from him as soon as the frigate anchored yesterday, and I shall ask him to dine sociably with me on board this evening. I hope you will join us.”
The grave gentleman said that he had business which would detain him on shore all night.
The barge swept up to the mole, the oars were thrown up at a wave of the coxswain’s hand, and came into the boat on either side 187 like shutting up a pair of fans, while the boat-hooks checked her way, and she remained stationary at the steps of the landing. The awning was canted, the commodore and his friend got out and mounted the stairway, while the boat’s crew stood up with their hats off. On the mole were four or five people in light West India rig of brown and white, and broad Guayaquil sombreros.
“Cleveland!” exclaimed a tall, handsome man, as he seized the commodore by both hands, “how glad we are to see you! Here is Tom Stewart, and Paddy Burns, and little Don Stingo, attorneys, factors, and sugar-boilers, all of us delighted to welcome you back once more to Jamaica!”
Crowding about the commodore, shaking hands and slapping one another on the back, standing off a step or two to see the effect of time on each other’s appearance, laughing heartily with many a happy allusion to days gone by, those old friends and former companions, unmindful of the hot sun, stood there with their faces lighted up and talking all together.
“And you are a commodore, eh! Cleveland, with a broad pennant and a squadron? Ah! we have kept the run of you, though. Read all about that action you were in with the ‘President,’ and that bloody battle in the ‘Essex’ and ‘Phebe’ at Valparaiso, with Porter. And here you are again, safe and sound, and hearty!”
“And you too, Piron! The same as ever! Not tired of cane-planting yet? But how is madame?”
“Lovely a girl as ever, Cleveland, but never entirely got over that sad loss of the little boy, you know. However, she will be overjoyed to see you. She’s been talking of you ever since we saw your appointment to the station fifteen months ago. Apropos, we have her widowed sister with us, whose husband was killed at Waterloo, and our little niece who came from France––all out there at the old place of Escondido, where you must come and pass a week with us. Nay, man, no excuse! The thing is arranged, and it would be the death of Stingo, Tom Stewart, and Paddy Burns if you disappoint us.”
“Well, Piron, I am your man, but not for a day or two, until I have made some official calls here on the authorities. Meanwhile, gentlemen, you all dine with me this evening on board the frigate, every mother’s soul of you! Coxswain, go on board and tell my steward to have dinner for six. Stop at the schooner as you go off, and say to Mr. Darcantel that I shall expect him to join us. Now, my friends, that matter is arranged, and we will all go off in the barge at sunset.”
“Dry talking, isn’t it, Stingo?” said Piron; “so, commodore, come, and we’ll have a sip of sangaree and a deviled biscuit to keep our mouths in order. But, halloo! where is your friend, Cleveland? that tall man in black? Parson or chaplain, eh?”
“No,” replied the officer; “an old friend of mine, my brother-in-law, who takes a cruise with me occasionally; but he never goes in society, and has taken himself off, as he always does when we get in port. He is a glorious fellow, though, and I hope to present him to you yet. Never mind him now.”
Arm in arm went the blue coat and bullion, locked in white grass sleeves, along the busy quays, crowded with mule-carts and drays for stores or shipping. Spanish dons, dapper Frenchmen, burly John Bulls, standing at warehouse and posadas, all with cigars in their teeth, which they puffed so lazily that the smoke scarcely found its way beyond the brims of their wide sombreros. Negroes, too, with scanty leg gear, and still scantier gingham shirts, having bales, or boxes, or baskets of fruit on their heads, never any thing in their hands, chattering and laughing one with another as they danced and jostled along the busy mart; then through the hot, sandy ruts of streets, pausing now and then to shake hands with some old acquaintance beneath the overhanging piazzas; sedan-chairs moving about, with a negro in a glazed hat and red cockade at either end of the poles, in a long easy trot, as they bore their burdens of Spanish matron, or English damsel, or maybe a portly old judge, or gouty admiral, on a shopping or business excursion to the port; so on to the upper town, where the dwellings stand in detachments by themselves––single or in pairs––with spacious balconies and bright green Venetian blinds, all surrounded by gardens and vines; with noble tamarind-trees, and cocoa-nuts swaying their lofty trunks, and rattling their branches and leaves over the negro huts and offices below. Here the party stopped, and, entering a house, were ushered into a cool, lofty room, where there were a lot of mahogany desks, and a single old clerk, who resembled a last year’s dried lemon, with some few drops of acid juice for blood, perched up on a hard stem of a high stool, with four or five quill pens, like so many thorns, sticking out above his yellow leafy ears.
“All by myself here, Cleveland, as I told you. All my people are living out there at Escondido. Very little business doing just now, and Paddy Burns and Tom Stewart haven’t had a suit or a fight for the last six months. Inkstands dry, and my old clerk, Clinker, there, has forgotten how to write English.
“However,” went on Piron, as the party threw themselves back on the wicker arm-chairs, and enjoyed the breeze which fluttered merrily through the blinds, “the cellar isn’t quite dry yet; and I say, Clinker, suppose you tell Nimble Jack, or Ring Finger Bill, to spread a little luncheon here, with a bottle or two of Bordeaux, or something of that sort!” The dried, fruity old gentleman dropped off his branch at the desk like a withered nut, and then, with a husky kind of shuffle, betook himself off.
“QUEER OLD STICK, THAT!” SAID THE COMMODORE.
“Queer old stick, that!” said the commodore, as he unbuckled his sword and laid it on the table.
“Ah! he grew here, and will blow away one of these days. My father used to tell me that he looked just the same when he first sprouted as he does now. But he is a dear faithful old stump; and you must remember hearing, Cleveland, of that frightful earthquake here in seventeen hundred and eighty-three, which killed so many people? Yes? Well, it was old Clinker who saved my sweet wife that is now––and her sister; though he was nearly squeezed––drier, if any thing, than he is now––in doing it. He lay, you know, Stingo, supporting the whole second story of the house for seven hours, pressed as flat as a tamarind-leaf, while they were getting those twin babies out of their cradle. Yes, God bless him!” Starting up, while a flush of feeling darkened his face––“but, what is more, he threw himself precisely where he did, as he saw the walls giving way, so that not a hair of those children should be injured when the beams came down. My father has told me since, that when they got a lever under the timber and wedged old Clinker out, he gave a kind of cackle; but, in my opinion, he has not drawn a breath from that day to this. And, generally, he is a very taciturn old root, and rarely opens his rind; but latterly he talks a good deal about the earthquake; says he’s sure there’ll be another awful one before an interval of forty years has passed, and wants us to go away. No objection, however, to coming back when the thing is over, and then waiting forty years for another. Don’t laugh, you Paddy Burns, for if ever the ‘Tremblor’ gives you one little shake, you’ll jump higher than you did when that ugly Frenchman ran you through your waistcoat pocket, and you thought it was your midriff. Now, Tom Stewart and Don Stingo, what are you grinning about? Your teeth will chatter so fast at the next quake that you won’t, either of you, be able to deliver a charge to the jury over a false invoice, or suck another drop of old Antigua rum.”
“But really, Piron,” broke in the commodore upon this voluble harangue, “do you give heed to these barkings of that old clerk?”
“Why, yes, Cleveland,” replied Piron, with rather a grave manner, “I do; and, moreover, my sweet wife Rosalie out yonder, who has never got over her grief for the loss of our boy, regards every word old Clinker says as so much prophecy; and the upshot of the business is, I have made up my mind to leave the island.”
“For where, my friend––back to France?”
“No. Since the war and the peace, with Bonaparte at St. Helena, France is no place for an Englishman, even with a French father, and I am going to try America.”
“Truly, Piron, I am charmed to hear it. But what part of America?”