Tom Cringle's Log Part 33

"Why, I guessed as much, if he seared you at all; but where did he sear you? Come now," coaxingly, "tell the court where and how he applied the actual cautery."

Job being thus driven to his wit's end, turned and stood at bay. "Now I will tell you, your honour, if you will but sit down for a moment, and answer me one question."

"To be sure; why, Job, you brighten on us. There, I am down now for your question."

"Now, sir," quoth Rumblet.i.thump, imitating his tormentor's manner much more cleverly than I expected, "what part of your honour's body touches your chair?"

"How, sir!" said the man of words--"how dare you, sir, take such a liberty, sir?" while a murmuring laugh hummed through the court.

"Now, sir, since you won't answer me, sir," said Job, elevated by his victory, while his hoa.r.s.e voice roughened into a loud growl, "I will answer myself. I was seared, sir, where"--

"Silence!" quoth the crier at this instant drowning the mate's voice, so that I could not catch the words he used.

"And there you have it, sir. Put me in jail, if you like, sir."

The murmur was bursting out into a guffaw, when the judge interfered.

But there was no longer any attempt at ill-timed jesting on the part of the bar, which was but bad taste at the best on so solemn an occasion.

Job continued, "I was burnt into the very muscle until I told where the gold was stowed away."

"Aha!" screamed the lawyer, forgetting his recent discomfiture in the gladness of his success. "And all the rest were abetting, eh?"

"The rest of the fifteen were, sir."

But the prosecutor, a glutton in his way, had thought he had bagged the whole forty-three. And so he ultimately did before the evening closed in, as most of the others were identified by other witnesses; and when they could not actually be sworn to, the piracies were brought home to them by circ.u.mstantial evidence; such, for instance, as having been captured on board of the craft we had taken, which again were identified as the very vessels which had plundered the merchantmen and murdered several of their crews, so that by six o'clock the jury had returned a verdict of Guilty--and I believe there never was a juster--against the whole of them. The finding, and sentence of death following thereupon, seemed not to create any strong effect upon the prisoners. They had all seen how the trial was going; and, long before this, the bitterness of death seemed to be past.

I could hear one of our boat's crew, who was standing behind me, say to his neighbour, "Why, Jem, surely he is in joke. Why, he don't mean to condemn them to be hanged seriously, without his wig, eh?"

Immediately after the judgment was p.r.o.nounced, which, both as to import, and literally, I had translated to them, Captain Transom, who was sitting on the bench beside his brother officers, nodded to me, "I say, Mr Cringle, tell the c.o.xswain to call Pearl, if you please."

I pa.s.sed the word to one of the Firebrand's marines, who was on duty, who again repeated the order to a seaman who was standing at the door.

"I say, Moses, call the clergyman."

Now this Pearl was no other than the seaman who pulled the stroke-oar in the gig; a very handsome negro, and the man who afterwards forked Whiffle out of the water--tall, powerful, and muscular, and altogether one of the best men in the ship. The rest of the boat's crew, from his complexion, had fastened the sobriquet of the clergyman on him.

"Call the clergyman."

The superseded interpreter, who was standing near, seemingly took no notice, immediately traduced this literally to the unhappy men. A murmur arose amongst them.

"Que--el padre ya! Somos en Capilla entonces--poco tiempo, poco tiempo!"

They had thought that the clergyman having been sent for, the sentence was immediately to be executed, but I undeceived them; and, in ten minutes after they were condemned, they were marched off under a strong escort of foot to the jail.

I must make a long story short. Two days afterwards, I was ordered with the launch to Kingston, early in the morning, to receive twenty-five of the pirates who had been ordered for execution that morning at Gallows Point. It was little past four in the morning when we arrived at the Wherry wharf, where they were already cl.u.s.tered, with their hands pinioned behind their backs, silent and sad, but all of them calm, and evincing no unmanly fear of death.

I don't know if other people have noticed it, but this was one of several instances where I have seen foreigners--Frenchmen, Italians, and Spaniards, for instance--meet death, inevitable death, with greater firmness than British soldiers or sailors. Let me explain. In the field, or grappling in mortal combat, on the blood-slippery quarterdeck of an enemy's vessel, British soldier or sailor is the bravest of the brave. No soldier or sailor of any other country, saving and excepting those d.a.m.ned Yankees, can stand against them--they would be utterly overpowered--their hearts would fail them--they would either be cut down thrust through, or they would turn and flee. Yet those same men who have turned and fled, will meet death, but it must be as I said, inevitable, unavoidable death, not only more firmly than their conquerors would do in their circ.u.mstances, but with an intrepidity oh, do not call it indifference!--altogether astonishing. Be it their religion, or their physical conformation, or what it may, all I have to do with, is the fact, which I record as undeniable. Out of five-and twenty individuals, in the present instance, not a sigh was heard, nor a moan, nor a querulous word. They stepped lightly into the boats, and seated themselves in silence. When told by the seamen to make room, or to shift so as not to be in the way of the oars, they did so with alacrity, and almost with an air of civility, although they knew that within half an hour their earthly career must close for ever.

The young Spaniard who had stood forward so conspicuously on the trial, was in my boat; in stepping in he accidentally trod on my foot in pa.s.sing forward; he turned and apologized, with much natural politeness "he hoped he had not hurt me?"

I answered kindly, I presume--who could have done so harshly? This emboldened him apparently, for he stopped, and asked leave to sit by me.

I consented, while an incomprehensible feeling crept over me; and when once I had time to recollect myself, I shrunk from him, as a blood stained brute, with whom even in his extremity it was unfitting for me to hold any intercourse. When he noticed my repugnance to remain near him, he addressed me hastily, as if afraid that I would destroy the opportunity he seemed to desire.

"G.o.d did not always leave me the slave of my pa.s.sions," he said, in a low, deep, most musical voice. "The day has been when I would have shrunk as you do--but time presses. You have a mother?" said he--I a.s.sented--"and an only sister?" As it happened, he was right here too.

"And--and"--here he hesitated, and his voice shook and trembled with the most intense and heart-crushing emotion--"y una mas cara que ambos?"

Mary, you can tell whether in this he did not also speak truth. I acknowledged there was another being more dear to me than either.

"Then," said he, "take this chain from my neck, and the crucifix, and a small miniature from my bosom; but not yet--not till I leave the boat.

You will find an address affixed to the string of the latter. Your course of service may lead you to St Jago if not, a brother officer may."

His voice became inaudible; his hot scalding tears dropped fast on my hand, and the ravisher, the murderer, the pirate, wept as an innocent and helpless infant. "You will deliver it. Promise a dying man--promise a great sinner." But it was momentary--he quelled the pa.s.sion with a fierce and savage energy, as he said sternly, "Promise!

promise!" I did so, and I fulfilled it.

The day broke. I took the jewels and miniature from his neck, as he led the way with the firm step of a hero, in ascending the long gibbet. The halters were adjusted, when he stepped towards the side I was on, as far as the rope would let him, "Dexa me verla--dexa me verla, una vez mas!"

I held up the miniature. He looked--he glared intensely at it. "Adios, Maria, seas feliz mi querida, feliz--feliz Maria--adios--adios--Maria Mar".

The rope severed thy name from his lips, sweet girl; but not until it also severed his soul from his body, and sent him to his tremendous account--young in years, but old in wickedness--to answer at that tribunal, where we must all appear, to the G.o.d who made him, and whose gifts he had so fearfully abused, for thy broken heart and early death, amongst the other scarlet atrocities of his short but ill spent life.

The signal had been given--the lumbering flap of the long drop was heard, and five-and-twenty human beings were wavering in the sea breeze in the agonies of death! The other eighteen suffered on the same spot the week following; and for long after, this fearful and b.l.o.o.d.y example struck terror into the Cuba fishermen.

"Strange now, that the majority--ahem--of my beauties and favourites through life have been called Mary. There is my own Mary--un peu pa.s.see certainly--but deil mean her, for half a dozen lit"--"Now, Tom Cringle, don't bother with your sentimentality, but get along, do."--"Well, I will get along--but have patience, you Hottentot Venus--you Lord Nugent, you. So once more we make sail."

Next morning, soon after gunfire, I landed at the Wherry wharf in Port Royal. It was barely daylight, but, to my surprise, I found my friend Peregrine Whiffle seated on a Spanish chair, close to the edge of the wharf, smoking a cigar. This piece of furniture is an arm-chair strongly framed with hard-wood, over which, back and bottom, a tanned hide is stretched, which, in a hot climate, forms a most luxurious seat, the back tumbling out at an angle of 45 degrees, while the skin yields to every movement, and does not harbour a nest of biting ants, or a litter of scorpions, or any other of the customary occupants of a cushion that has been in Jamaica for a year.

He did not know me as I pa.s.sed; but his small glimmering red face instantly identified the worthy little old man to me.

"Good morning, Mr Whiffle--the top of the morning to you, sir."

"Hillo," responded Peregrine--"Tom, is it you?--how d'ye do, man--how d'ye do?" and he started to his feet, and almost embraced me.

Now, I had never met the said Peregrine Whiffle but twice in my life; once at Mr Fyall's, and once during the few days I remained in Kingston, before I set out on my travels; but he was a warm hearted kindly old fellow, and, from knowing all my friends there very intimately, he, as a matter of course, became equally familiar with me.

"Why the diable came you not to see me, man? Have been here for change of air, to recruit, you know, after that demon, the gout, had been so perplexing me, ever since you came to anchor--the Firebrand, I mean--as for you, you have been mad one while, and philandering with those inconvenient white ladies the other. You'll cure of that, my boy you'll come to the original comforts of the country soon, no fear!"

"Perhaps I may, perhaps not."

"Oh, your cousin Mary, I forgot--fine girl, Tom--may do for you at home yonder," (all Creoles speak of England as home, although they may never have seen it,) "but she can't make pepper-pot, nor give a dish of land crabs as land crabs should be given, nor see to the serving up of a ringtail pigeon, nor rub a beefsteak to the rotting turn with a bruised papaw, nor compose a medicated bath, nor, nor--oh, confound it, Tom, she will be, when you marry her, a cold, comfortless, motionless Creole icicle!"

I let him have his swing. "Never mind her then, never mind her, my dear sir; but time presses and I must be off, I must indeed, so good morning; I wish you a good morning, sir."

He started to his feet, and caught hold of me. "Sha'n't go, Tom, impossible--come along with me to my lodgings, and breakfast with me.

Here, Pilfer, Pilfer," to his black valet, "give me my stick, and ma.s.su the chair, and run home and order breakfast--cold calipiver--our Jamaica salmon, you know, Tom-tea and coffee pickled mackerel, eggs, and cold tongue--any thing that Mother Dingychops can give us; so bolt, Pilfer, bolt!"

I told him that before I came ash.o.r.e I had heard the gig's-crew piped away, and that I therefore expected, as Jonathan says, that the captain would be after me immediately; so that I wished at all events to get away from where we were, as I had no desire to be caught gossiping about when my superior might be expected to pa.s.s.

"True, boy, true"--as he shackled himself to me, and we began to crawl along towards the wharf-gate leading into the town. Captain Transom by this time had landed, and came up with us.

"Ah, Transom," said Whiffle, "glad to see you. I say, why won't you allow Mr Cringle here to go over to Spanish Town with me for a couple of days, eh?"