Captain Canot Part 8

Presently, the formal ring was broken, and each female stepping out singly, danced according to her individual fancy. Some were wild, some were soft, some were tame, and some were fiery. After so many years I have no distinct recollection of the characteristic movements of these semi-savages, especially as the claret and champagne rather fermented in my brain, and possessed me with the idea that it was my duty to mingle in the bounding throng. I resolved that the barbarians should have a taste of Italian quality!

Accordingly, I leaped from the hammock where I had swung idly during the scene, and, beginning with a _balancez_ and an _avant-deux_, terminated my terpsich.o.r.ean exhibition by a regular "double shuffle"

and sailor's hornpipe. The delirious laughter, cracked sides, rollicking fun, and outrageous merriment, with which my feats were received, are unimaginable by sober-sided people. Tired of my single exhibition, I seized the prettiest of the group by her slim, shining waist, and whirled her round and round the court in the quickest of waltzes, until, with a kiss, I laid her giddy and panting on the floor. Then, grasping another,--another,--another,--and another,--and treating each to the same dizzy swim, I was about waltzing the whole _seraglio_ into quiescence, when who should rise before us but the staring and yawning _Mongo_!

The apparition sobered me. A quarteroon pet of Ormond,--just spinning into fashionable and luscious insensibility,--fell from my arms into those of her master; and while I apologized for the freak, I charged it altogether to the witchcraft of his wit and wine.

"Ha!" said the Mongo, "St. Vitus is in your Italian heels the moment you are within hail of music and dancing; and, by Jove, it seems you can scent a petticoat as readily as a hound tracks runaways. But there's no harm in _dancing_, Don Teodore; only hereafter I hope you will enjoy the amus.e.m.e.nt in a less uproarious manner. In Africa we are fond of a _siesta_ after dinner; and I recommend you to get, as soon as possible, under the lee of another bottle."

We retired once more to his mahogany; and, under the spell of my chieftain's claret and sea-yarns, I was soon lapped in delicious sleep.

Next day the captain of the Areostatico drew me aside confidentially, and hinted that Ormond had taken such a decided fancy for me, and _insinuated_ so warm a wish for my continuance _as his clerk_ at Bangalang, that he thought it quite a duty, though a sad one, to give his advice on the subject.

"It may be well for your purse, Don Teodore, to stay with so powerful a trader; but beside the improvement of your fortunes, there are doubts whether it will be _wholesome_ for you to revisit Havana, at least at present. It may be said, _amigo mio_, that you _commenced_ the warfare on board the schooner;--and as five men were slain in the affray, it will be necessary for me to report the fact to the _commandante_ as soon as I arrive. Now it is true, _hijo mio_, that you saved the vessel, cargo, specie, and my cousin; yet, G.o.d knows what may be the result of Havana justice. You will have a rigid examination, and I rather think you will be _imprisoned_ until the final decision is made. When that consummation shall occur is quite uncertain. If you have friends, they will be bled as long as possible before you get out; if you have none, no one will take pains to see you released without recompense. When you see daylight once more, the rest of these ragam.u.f.fins and the felon friends of the dead men, will begin to dog your steps, and make Havana uncomfortable as well as dangerous; so that I have no hesitation in recommending you to stay where you are, and take the doubloons of the Mongo."

I thought I saw at a glance the drift of this hypocritical _fanfaronade_, and was satisfied he only desired to get rid of me in order to reinstate the chief mate in a situation which he surely could not occupy as long as I was on board. As I meant to stay in Africa, I told him at once that I grieved because he had not spoken his wishes openly, boldly, and honestly, like a man, but had masked an ungrateful cowardice by hypocritical solicitude for my welfare. I departed abruptly with a scowl of contempt; and as he hastened to hide his blanched face in the cabin, I called a boat, and throwing my sea chest, bedding, and arms, aboard, committed my fate to the African continent. _A half-hour turned and decided my fate!_

Mr. Ormond received me very cordially, and, installing me in my new secretaryship, promised a private establishment, a seat at his table, and a negro per month,--or its value at the rate of forty dollars,--for my services.

When the runners returned from the interior with the slaves required to complete the Areostatico's cargo, I considered it my duty to the Italian grocer of Regla to dispatch his vessel personally.

Accordingly, I returned on board to aid in stowing _one hundred and eight boys and girls, the eldest of whom did not exceed fifteen years_! As I crawled between decks, I confess I could not imagine how this little army was to be packed or draw breath in a hold but _twenty-two inches high_! Yet the experiment was promptly made, inasmuch as it was necessary to secure them below in descending the river, in order to prevent their leaping overboard and swimming ash.o.r.e. I found it impossible to adjust the whole in a sitting posture; but we made them lie down in each other's laps, like _sardines_ in a can, and in this way obtained s.p.a.ce for the entire cargo. Strange to tell, when the Areostatico reached Havana, but _three_ of these "pa.s.sengers" had paid the debt of nature.

As I left the schooner a few miles outside the bar, I crossed her side without an adieu save for the English cabin-boy, whose fate I was pained to intrust to these stupid Spaniards. Indeed, the youth almost belonged to me, for I may say he owed his life to my interference.

Previous to the voyage, while waiting in the harbor of Havana for a crew, our vessel was anch.o.r.ed near the wharves, next to an English merchantman. One afternoon I heard a scream from the neighboring craft, and perceived a boy rush from the cabin with his face dyed in blood. He was instantly pursued by a burly seaman, inflicting blows with his fist. I implored the brute to desist, but my interference seemed to augment his choler to such a degree, that he seized a handspike to knock the stripling down. Upon this I called the child to leap overboard, at the same time commanding a hand to lower my boat and scull in the direction of his fall. The boy obeyed my voice; and in a few minutes I had him on board blessing me for his safety. But the drunken Briton vented his rage in the most indecent language; and had his boat been aboard, I doubt not a summary visit would have terminated in a fight on my deck.

However, as good luck would have it, his skiff was at the landing, so that there was ample time, before he could reach the Areostatico, to tie up the bruised face and broken rib of the child, and to conceal him in the house of a Spanish crone in Havana, who cured the maladies of credulous seamen by witchcraft!

After nightfall the master of the British vessel came aboard to claim his boy; but as he was petulant and seemed disposed to carry matters with a high hand, my temper rose in resistance, and I refused to release the child until he sealed with an oath his promise to treat him better in future. But the cruel scoundrel insisted on _unconditional_ surrender; and to end the controversy, I was compelled to order him off the schooner.

British pluck of course would not allow a captain to be deprived so easily of his property, so the British consul was invoked to appeal to the captain of the port. This personage summoned me before him, and listened calmly to a story which added no honor to English mariners. In my last interview with the boy he implored my continued protection and concealment; so that when the Spanish official declared--notwithstanding the officer's conduct--that the vessel was ent.i.tled to her crew, and that I must surrender the child, I excused myself from complying by pleading utter ignorance of his whereabout.

In view of this contingency, I directed the woman to hide him in a place of which I should be ignorant. So I told no lie, and saved the boy from his tyrant.

The inquiry was dropped at this stage of proceedings. When the British vessel sailed a few days after, I caused the youth to be brought from his concealment; and, with our captain's consent, brought him aboard to serve in our cabin.

I have narrated this little episode in consequence of my love for the boy, and because _he was the only English subject I ever knew to ship in a slaver_.

I requested the Areostatico's owners to pay him liberally for his fidelity when he got back to Havana; and I was happy to learn next year, that they not only complied with my request, but sent him home to his friends in Liverpool.

CHAPTER VIII.

When I got back to Bangalang, my first movement was to take possession of the quarters a.s.signed me by the Mongo, and to make myself as comfortable as possible in a land whose chief requirements are shade and shelter. My house, built of cane plastered with mud, consisted of two earthen-floored rooms and a broad verandah. The thatched roof was rather leaky, while my furniture comprised two arm-chests covered with mats, a deal table, a bamboo settle, a tin-pan with palm-oil for a lamp, and a German looking-gla.s.s mounted in a paper frame. I augmented these comforts by the addition of a trunk, mattress, hammock and pair of blankets; yet, after all this embellishment, I confess my household was rather a sorry affair.

It is time I should make the reader acquainted with the individual who was the presiding genius of the scene, and, in some degree, a type of his peculiar cla.s.s in Africa.

Mr. Ormond was the son of an opulent slave-trader from Liverpool, and owed his birth to the daughter of a native chief on the Rio Pongo. His father seems to have been rather proud of his mulatto stripling, and dispatched him to England to be educated. But Master John had made little progress in belles-lettres, when news of the trader's death was brought to the British agent, who refused the youth further supplies of money. The poor boy soon became an outcast in a land which had not yet become fashionably addicted to philanthropy; and, after drifting about awhile in England, he shipped on board a merchantman. The press-gang soon got possession of the likely mulatto for the service of his Britannic Majesty. Sometimes he played the part of dandy waiter in the cabin; sometimes he swung a hammock with the hands in the forecastle. Thus, five years slipped by, during which the wanderer visited most of the West Indian and Mediterranean stations.

At length the prolonged cruise was terminated, and Ormond paid off. He immediately determined to employ his h.o.a.rded cash in a voyage to Africa, where he might claim his father's property. The project was executed; his mother was still found alive; and, fortunately for the manly youth, she recognized him at once as her first-born.

The reader will recollect that these things occurred on the west coast of Africa in the early part of the present century, and that the tenure of property, and the interests of foreign traders, were controlled entirely by such _customary_ laws as prevailed on the spot.

Accordingly, a "grand palaver" was appointed, and all Mr. Ormond's brothers, sisters, uncles, and cousins,--many of whom were in possession of his father's slaves or their descendants,--were summoned to attend. The "talk" took plate at the appointed time. The African mother stood forth stanchly to a.s.sert the ident.i.ty and rights of her first-born, and, in the end, all of the Liverpool trader's property, in houses, lands, and negroes, that could be ascertained, was handed over, according to coast-law, to the returned heir.

When the mulatto youth was thus suddenly elevated into comfort, if not opulence, in his own country, he resolved to augment his wealth by pursuing his father's business. But the whole country was then desolated by a civil war, occasioned, as most of them are, by family disputes, which it was necessary to terminate before trade could be comfortably established.

To this task Ormond steadfastly devoted his first year. His efforts were seconded by the opportune death of one of the warring chiefs. A tame opponent,--a brother of Ormond's mother,--was quickly brought to terms by a trifling present; so that the sailor boy soon concentrated the family influence, and declared himself "MONGO," or, Chief of the River.

Bangalang had long been a noted factory among the English traders.

When war was over, Ormond selected this post as his permanent residence, while he sent runners to Sierra Leone and Goree with notice that he would shortly be prepared with ample cargoes. Trade, which had been so long interrupted by hostilities, poured from the interior.

Vessels from Goree and Sierra Leone were seen in the offing, responding to his invitation. His stores were packed with British, French, and American fabrics; while hides, wax, palm-oil, ivory, gold, and slaves, were the native products for which Spaniards and Portuguese hurried to proffer their doubloons and bills.

It will be readily conjectured that a very few years sufficed to make Jack Ormond not only a wealthy merchant, but a popular Mongo among the great interior tribes of Foulahs and Mandingoes. The petty chiefs, whose territory bordered the sea, flattered him with the t.i.tle of king; and, knowing his _Mormon taste_, stocked his _harem_ with their choicest children as the most valuable tokens of friendship and fidelity.

When I was summoned to act as secretary or clerk of such a personage, I saw immediately that it would be well not only to understand my duties promptly, but to possess a clear estimate of the property I was to administer and account for. Ormond's easy habits satisfied me that he was not a man of business originally, or had become sadly negligent under the debasing influence of wealth and voluptuousness. My earliest task, therefore, was to make out a _minute inventory_ of his possessions, while I kept a watchful eye on his stores, never allowing any one to enter them unattended. When I presented this doc.u.ment, which exhibited a large deficiency, the Mongo received it with indifference, begging me not to "annoy him with accounts." His manner indicated so much petulant fretfulness, that I augured from it the conscious decline or disorder of his affairs.

As I was returning to the warehouse from this mortifying interview, I encountered an ancient hag,--a sort of superintendent Cerberus or manager of the Mongo's _harem_,--who, by signs, intimated that she wanted the key to the "cloth-chest," whence she immediately helped herself to several fathoms of calico. The crone could not speak English, and, as I did not understand the Soosoo dialect, we attempted no oral argument about the propriety of her conduct; but, taking a pencil and paper, and making signs that she should go to the Mongo, who would write an order for the raiment, I led her quietly to the door. The wrath of the virago was instantly kindled, while her horrid face gleamed with that devilish ferocity, which, in some degree is lost by Africans who dwell on our continent. During the reign of my predecessors, it seems that she had been allowed to control the store keys, and to help herself unstintedly. I knew not, of course, what she _said_ on this occasion; but the violence of her gestures, the nervous spasms of her limbs, the flashing of her eyes, the scream of her voluble tongue, gave token that she swelled with a rage which was augmented by my imperturbable quietness. At dinner, I apprised Mr.

Ormond of the negro's conduct; but he received the announcement with the same laugh of indifference that greeted the account of his deficient inventory.

That night I had just stretched myself on my hard pallet, and was revolving the difficulties of my position with some degree of pain at my forced continuance in Africa, when my servant tapped softly at the door, and announced that some one demanded admittance, but begged that I would first of all extinguish the light. I was in a country requiring caution; so I felt my pistols before I undid the latch. It was a bright, star-light night; and, as I opened the door sufficiently to obtain a glance beyond,--still maintaining my control of the aperture,--I perceived the figure of a female, wrapped in cotton cloth from head to foot, except the face, which I recollected as that of the beautiful _quarteroon_ I was whirling in the waltz, when surprised by the Mongo. She put forth her hands from the folds of her garment, and laying one softly on my arm, while she touched her lips with the other, looked wistfully behind, and glided into my apartment.

This poor girl, the child of a mulatto mother and a white parent, was born in the settlement of Sierra Leone, and had acquired our language with much more fluency than is common among her race. It was said that her father had been originally a missionary from Great Britain, but abandoned his profession for the more lucrative traffic in slaves, to which he owed an abundant fortune. It is probable that the early ecclesiastical turn of her delinquent progenitor induced him, before he departed for America, to bestow on his child the biblical name of ESTHER.

I led my trembling visitor to the arm-chest, and, seating her gently by my side, inquired why I was favored by so stealthy a visit from the _harem_. My suspicions were aroused; for, though a novice in Africa, I knew enough of the discipline maintained in these slave factories, not to allow my fancy to seduce me with the idea that her visit was owing to mad-cap sentimentality.

The manner of these _quarteroon_ girls, whose complexion hardly separates them from our own race, is most winningly graceful; and Esther, with abated breath, timidly asked my pardon for intruding, while she declared I had made so bitter an enemy of Unga-golah,--the head-woman of the seraglio,--that, in spite of danger, she stole to my quarters with a warning. Unga swore revenge. I had insulted and thwarted her; I was able to thwart her at all times, if I remained the Mongo's "book-man;"--I must soon "go to another country;" but, if I did not, I would quickly find the food of Bangalang excessively unwholesome! "Never eat any thing that a Mandingo offers you," said Esther. "Take your meals exclusively from the Mongo's table.

Unga-golah knows all the Mandingo _jujus_, and she will have no scruple in using them in order to secure once more the control of the store keys. Good night!"

With this she rose to depart, begging me to be silent about her visit, and to believe that a poor slave could feel true kindness for a white man, or even expose herself to save him.

If an unruly pa.s.sion had tugged at my heartstrings, the soft appeal, the liquid tones, the tenderness of this girl's humanity, would have extinguished it in an instant. It was the first time for many a long and desolate mouth that I had experienced the gentle touch of a woman's hand, or felt the interest of mortal solicitude fall like a refreshing dew upon my heart! Who will censure me for halting on my door-sill as I led her forth, retaining her little hand in mine, while I cast my eyes over the lithe symmetry of those slender and rounded limbs; while I feasted on the flushed magnolia of those beautiful cheeks, twined my fingers in the trailing braids of that raven hair, peered into the blackness of those large and swimming orbs, felt a tear trickle down my hardening face, and left, on those coral lips, the print of a kiss that was fuller of grat.i.tude than pa.s.sion!

Nowadays that Mormonism is grafting a "celestial wifery" upon the civilization of the nineteenth century, I do not think it amiss to recall the memory of those African establishments which formed so large a portion of a trader's homestead. It is not to be supposed that the luxurious _harem_ of Turkey or Egypt was transferred to the Guinea coast, or that its lofty walls were barricaded by stout gates, guarded by troops of sable eunuchs. The "wifery" of my employer was a bare inclosure, formed by a quadrangular cl.u.s.ter of mud-houses, the entrance to whose court-yard was never watched save at night.

Unga-golah, the eldest and least delectable of the dames, maintained the establishment's police, a.s.signed gifts or servants to each female, and distributed her master's favors according to the bribes she was cajoled by.

In early life and during his gorged prosperity, Ormond,--a stout, burly, black-eyed, broad-shouldered, short-necked man,--ruled his _harem_ with the rigid decorum of the East. But as age and misfortunes stole over the sensual voluptuary, his mental and bodily vigor became impaired, not only by excessive drink, but by the narcotics to which he habitually resorted for excitement. When I became acquainted with him, his face and figure bore the marks of a worn-out _debauche_. His harem now was a fashion of the country rather than a domestic resort.

His wives ridiculed him, or amused themselves as they pleased. I learned from Esther that there was hardly one who did not "flirt" with a lover in Bangalang, and that Unga-golah was blinded by gifts, while the stupor of the Mongo was perpetuated by liquor.

It may be supposed that in such a _seraglio_, and with such a master, there were but few matrimonial jealousies; still, as it would be difficult to find, even in our most Christian society, two females without some lurking bitterness towards rivals, so it is not to be imagined that the Mongo's mansion was free from womanly quarrels.

These disputes chiefly occurred when Ormond distributed gifts of calico, beads, tobacco, pipes and looking-gla.s.ses. If the slightest preference or inequality was shown, adieu to order. Unga-golah descended below zero! The favorite wife, outraged by her neglected authority, became furious; and, for a season, pandemonium was let loose in Bangalang.

One of these scenes of pa.s.sion occurs to me as I write. I was in the store with the Mongo when an aggrieved dame, not remarkable either for delicacy of complexion or sweetness of odor, entered the room, and marching up with a swagger to her master, dashed a German looking-gla.s.s on the floor at his feet. She wanted a larger one, for the gla.s.s bestowed on her was half an inch smaller than the gifts to her companions.

When Ormond was sober, his pride commonly restrained him from allowing the women to molest his leisure; so he quietly turned from the virago and ordered her out of the store.