Tom Cringle's Log Part 29

"How is her head, Quartermaster?"

"South-east and by south, sir. If the wind holds, we shall weather Morant Point, I think, sir."

"Very like, very like.--What is that glancing backwards and forwards across the port-hole there, Quartermaster?"

"I told you so, Mafame," said the man; "what are you skylarking about the mizen-chains for, man?--Come in, will you, come in."

The Captain's caution to his servant flashed on me.

"Come in, my man, and give my respects to the Captain, and tell him that I am quite well now; the fresh air has perfectly restored me."

"I will, sir," said Mafame, half ashamed at being detected in his office of inspector-general of my actions; but the Doctor, to whom he had been sent, having now got a leisure moment from his labour in the shambles, came up and made enquiries as to how I felt.

"Why, Doctor, I thought I was in for a fever half an hour ago, but it is quite gone off, or nearly so--there, feel my pulse."--It was regular, and there was no particular heat of skin.

"Why, I don't think there is much the matter with you. Mafame, tell the Captain so; but turn in and take some rest as soon as you can, and I will see you in the morning--and here," feeling in his waistcoat pocket, "here are a couple of capers for you; take them now, will you?" (And he handed me two blue pills, which I the next moment chucked overboard, to cure some bilious dolphin of the liver complaint.) I promised to do so whenever the Lieutenant relieved the deck, which would, I made no question, be within half an hour.

"Very well, that will do--good-night. I am regularly done up myself,"

quoth the Medico, as he descended to the gunroom.

At this time of night, the prizes were all in a cl.u.s.ter under our lee quarter, like small icebergs covered with snow, and carrying every rag they could set. The Gleam was a good way a-stern, as if to whip them in, and to take care that no stray piccaroon should make a dash at any of them. They slid noiselessly along like phantoms of the deep, every thing in the air and in the water was so still--I crossed to the lee side of the deck to look at them--The Wave, seeing some one on the hammock nettings, sheered close to, under the Firebrand's lee quarter, and some one asked, "Do you want to speak us?" The man's voice, reflected from the concave surface of the schooner's mainsail, had a hollow, echoing sound, that startled me.

"I should know that voice," said I to myself, "and the figure steering the schooner."

The throbbing in my head and the dizzy feel, which had capsized my judgment in the cabin, again returned with increased violence--"It was no deception after all," thought I, "no cheat of the senses--I now believe such things are."

The same voice now called out, "Come away, Tom, come away," no doubt to some other seaman on board the little vessel, but my heated fancy did not so construe it. The col real again overtook me, and I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, "G.o.d have mercy upon me a sinner!"

"Why don't you come, Tom?" said the voice once more.

It was Obed's. At this very instant of time, the Wave forged a-head into the Firebrand's shadow, so that her sails, but a moment before white as wool in the bright moonbeams suffered a sudden eclipse, and became black as ink.

"His dark spirit is there," said I, audibly, "and calls me--go I will, whatever may befall."

I hailed the schooner, or rather I had only to speak, and that in a low tone, for she was now close under the counter "Send your boat, for since you call, I know I must come."

A small canoe slid off her deck; two ship boys got into it, and pulled under the starboard mizzen-chains, which entirely concealed them, as they held on for a moment with a boat-hook in the dark shadow of the ship. This was done so silently, that neither the lookout on the p.o.o.p, who was rather on the weather-side at the moment, nor the man at the lee gangway, who happened to be looking out forward, heard them, or saw me, as I slipped down unperceived.

"Pull back again, my lads; quick now, quick."

In a moment, I was along-side, the next I was on deck, and in this short s.p.a.ce a change had come over the spirit of my dream, for I now was again conscious that I was on board the Wave with a prize crew. My imagination had taken another direction.

"Now Mr----, I beg pardon, I forget your name,"--I had never heard it, "make more sail, and haul out from the fleet for Mancheoneal Bay; I have despatches for the admiral--So, crack on."

The midshipman who was in charge of her never for an instant doubted but that all was right; sail was made, and as the light breeze was the very thing for the little Wave, she began to snorer through it like smoke.

When she had shot a cable's length a-head of the Firebrand, we kept away a point or two, so as to stand more in for the land, and, like most maniacs, I was inwardly exulting at the success of my manoeuvre, when we heard the corvette's bell struck rapidly. Her maintop-sail was suddenly laid to the mast, whilst a loud voice echoed amongst the sails--"Any one see hi--in in the waist--anybody see him forward there?"

"No, sir, no."

"After guard, fire, and let go the life--buoy--lower away the quarter boats--jolly-boat also."

We saw the flash, and presently the small blue light of the buoy, blazing and disappearing, as it rose and fell on the waves, in the corvette's wake, sailed away astern, sparkling fitfully, like an ignis fatuus. The cordage rattled through the davit blocks, as the boats dashed into the water--the splash of the oars was heard, and presently the twinkle of the life-buoy was lost in the lurid glare of the blue lights, held aloft in each boat, where the crews were standing up, looking like spectres by the ghastly blaze, and anxiously peering about for some sign of the drowning man.

"A man overboard," was repeated from one to another of the prize crew.

"Sure enough," said I.

"Shall we stand back, sir?" said the midshipman.

"To what purpose?--there are enough there without us--no, no; crack on, we can do no good--carry on, carry on!"

We did so, and I now found severe shooting pains, more racking than the sharpest rheumatism I had ever suffered, pervading my whole body. They increased until I suffered the most excruciating agony, as if my bones had been converted into red-hot tubes of iron, and the marrow in them had been dried up with fervent heat, and I was obliged to beg that a hammock might be spread on deck, on which I lay down, pleading great fatigue and want of sleep as my excuse.

My thirst was unquenchable; the more I drank, the hotter it became. My tongue, and mouth, and throat, were burning, as if molten lead had been poured down into my stomach, while the most violent retching came on every ten minutes. The prize crew, poor fellows, did all they could once or twice they seemed about standing back to the ship, but, "make sail, make sail," was my only cry. They did so, and there I lay without any thing between me and the wet planks but a thin sailor's blanket and the canva.s.s of the hammock, through the livelong night, and with no covering but a damp boatcloak, raving at times during the hot fits, at others having my power of utterance frozen up during the cold ones. The men, once or twice, offered to carry me below, but the idea was horrible to me.

"No, no--not there--for heaven's sake not there! If you do take me down, I am sure I shall see him, and the dead mate--No, no overboard rather, throw me overboard rather."

Oh, what would I not have given for the luxury of a flood of tears!--But the fountains of mine eyes were dried up, and seared as with a red-hot iron--my skin was parched, and hot, hot, as if every pore had been hermetically sealed; there was a h.e.l.l within me and about me as if the deck on which I lay had been steel at a white heat, and the gushing blood, as under the action of a force-pump, throbbed through my head, like it would have burst on my brain--and such a racking, splitting headache--no language can describe it, and yet ever and anon in the midst of this raging fire, this furnace at my heart, seven times heated, a sudden icy shivering chill would shake me, and pierce through and through me, even when the roasting fever was at the hottest.

At length the day broke on the long, long, moist, steamy night, and once more the sun rose to bless every thing but me. As the morning wore on, my torments increased with the heat, and I lay sweltering on deck, in a furious delirium, held down forcibly by two men, who were relieved by others every now and then, while I raved about Obed, and Paul, and the scenes I had witnessed on board during the chase, and in the attack.

None of my rough but kind nurses expected I could have held on till nightfall; but shortly after sunset I became more collected, and, as I was afterwards told, whenever any little office was performed for me, whenever some drink was held to my lips, I would say to the gruff sunburnt, black-whiskered, square shouldered topman who might be my Ganymede for the occasion, "Thank you, Mary; Heaven bless your pale face, Mary; bless you, bless you!"

It seemed my fancy had shaken itself clear of the fearful objects that had so pertinaciously haunted me before, and occupying itself with pleasing recollections, had produced a corresponding cahn in the animal; but the poor fellow to whom I had expressed myself so endearingly, was, I learned, most awfully put out and dismayed. He twisted and turned his iron features into all manner of ludicrous combinations, under the laughter of his mates--"Now, Peter, may I be--but I would rather be shot at, than hear the poor young gentleman so quiz me in his madness."

Then again--as I praised his lovely taper fingers--they were more like bunches of frosted carrots, dipped in a tar-bucket, with the tails snapt short off, where about an inch thick.

"My taper fingers--oh lord! Now, Peter, I can't stomach this any longer, I'll give you my grog for the next two days, if you will take my spell here--My taper fingers--murder!"

As the evening closed in we saw the high land of Jamaica, but it was the following afternoon before we were off the entrance of Mancheoneal Bay.

All this period, although it must have been one of great physical suffering, has ever, to my ethereal part, remained a dead blank. The first thing I remember afterwards, was being carried ash.o.r.e in the dark in a hammock slung on two oars, so as to form a sort of rude palanquin, and laid down at a short distance from the overseer's house where my troubles had originally commenced. I soon became perfectly sensible and collected, but I was so weak I could not speak; after resting a little, the men again lifted me and proceeded. The door of the dining-hall, which was the back entrance into the overseer's house, opened flush into the little garden through which we had come in--there were lights, and sounds of music, singing, and jovialty within. The farther end of the room, at the door of which I now rested, opened into the piazza, or open veranda, which crossed it at right angles, and const.i.tuted the front of the house, forming, with this apartment, a figure somewhat like the letter T. I stood at the foot of the letter, as it were, and as I looked towards the piazza, which was gaily lit up, I could see it was crowded with male and female negroes in their holyday apparel, with their wholesome clear brown-black skins, not blue-black as they appear in our cold country, and beautiful white teeth, and sparkling black eyes, amongst whom were several gumbie-men and flute-players, and John Canoes, as the negro Jack Pudding is called; the latter distinguishable by wearing white false faces, and enormous shocks of horsehair, fastened on to their woolly pates. Their character hovers somewhere between that of a harlequin and a clown, as they dance about, and thread through the negro groups, quizzing the women and slapping the men; and at Christmas time, the grand negro carnival, they don't confine their practical jokes to their own colour, but take all manner of comical liberties with the whites equally with their fellow bondsmen.

The blackamoor visitors had suddenly, to all appearance, broken off their dancing, and were now cl.u.s.tered behind a rather remarkable group, who were seated at supper in the dining-room, near to where I stood, forming, as it were, the foreground in the scene. Mr Fyall himself was there, and a rosy-gilled, happy-looking man, who I thought I had seen before; this much I could discern, for the light fell strong on them, especially on the face of the latter, which shone like a star of the first magnitude, or a lighthouse in the red gleam--the usual family of the overseer, the book-keepers that is, and the worthy who had been the proximate cause of all my sufferings, the overseer himself, were there too, as if they had been sitting still at table where I saw them now, ever since I left them three weeks before--at least my fancy did me the favour to annihilate, for the nonce, all intermediate time between the point of my departure on the night of the cooper's funeral, and the moment when I now revisited them.

I was lifted out of the hammock, and supported to the door between two seamen. The fresh, nice-looking man before mentioned, Aaron Bang, Esquire, by name, an incipient planting attorney in the neighbourhood, of great promise, was in the act of singing a song, for it was during some holyday-time, which had broken down the stiff observances of a Jamaica planter's life. There he sat, lolling back on his chair, with his feet upon the table, and a cigar, half consumed, in his hand. He had twisted up his mouth and mirth-provoking nose, which, by an unaccountable control over some muscle, present in the visage of no other human being, he made to describe a small circle round the centre of his face, and slewing his head on one side, he was warbling, ore Yotundo, some melodious ditty, with infinite complacency, and, to all appearance, to the great delight of his auditory, when his eyes lighted on me,--he was petrified in a moment, I seemed to have blasted him,----his warbling ceased instantaneously, the colour faded from his cheeks, but there he sat, with open mouth, and in the same att.i.tude as if he still sung, and I had suddenly become deaf, or as if he and his immediate compotators, and the group of blackies beyond, had all been on the instant turned to stone by a slap from one of their own John Canoes. I must have been in truth a terrible spectacle; my skin was yellow, not as saffron, but as the skin of a ripe lime; the white of my eyes, to use an Irishism, ditto; my mouth and lips had festered and broke out, as we say in Scotland; my head was bound round with a napkin--none of the cleanest, you may swear; my dress was a pair of dirty duck trowsers, and my shirt, with the boat-cloak that had been my only counterpane on board of the little vessel, hanging from my shoulders.

Lazarus himself could scarcely have been a more appalling object, when the voice of him who spoke as never man spake, said, "Lazarus come forth."

I made an unavailing attempt to cross the threshold, but could not. I was spellbound, or there was an invisible barrier erected against me, which I could not overleap. The buzzing in my ears, the pain and throbbing in my head, and racking aches, once more bent me to the earth, ill and reduced as I was, a relapse, thought I; and I felt my judgment once more giving way before the sweltering fiend, who had retreated but for a moment to renew his attacks with still greater fierceness. The moment he once more entered into me--the instant that I was possessed--I cannot call it by any other name--an unnatural strength pervaded my shrunken muscles and emaciated frame, and I stepped boldly into the hall.

While I had stood at the door, listless and feeble as a child, hanging on the arms of the two topmen, after they had raised me from the hammock, the whole party had sat silently gazing at me, with their faculties paralysed with terror. But now, when I stumped into the room like the marble statue in Don Juan, and glared on them, my eyes sparkling with unearthly brilliancy under the fierce distemper which had anew thrust its red hot fingers into my maw, and was at the moment seething my brain in its h.e.l.lish caldron, the negroes in the piazza, one and all, men, women, and children, evanished into the night, and the whole party in the foreground started to their legs, as if they had been suddenly galvanized; the table and chairs were overset, and whites and blacks trundled, and scrambled, and bundled over and over each other, neck and crop, as if the very devil had come to invite them to dinner in propria personal horns, tail, and all.

"Duppy come! Duppy come! Ma.s.sa Tom Cringle ghost stand at for we door; we all shall dead, oh--we all shall go dead, oh!" bellowed the father of G.o.ds, my old ally Jupiter.

"Guid guide us, that's an awful sicht!" quod the Scotch bookkeeper.

"By the hockeytt speak if you be a ghost, or I'll exercise [exorcise] ye wid this b.u.t.t of a musket," quoth the Irishman to be sure, whose round bullet head was discernible in the human ma.s.s, by his black, twinkling, half-drunken-looking eyes.

"Well-a-day," groaned another of them, a Welshman, I believe, with a face as long as my arm, and a drawl worthy of a Methodist parson; "and what can it be-flesh and blood, it is not--can these dry bones live?"