Tom Cringle's Log Part 37

"Thomas," said Conscience, in a voice that made my flesh creep, "not into your bed, neither into your bosom, Thomas. Be civil to the young woman, but remember what your best friend Adversity told you, and never let her be more than your handmaiden again; free to come, free to go, but never more to be your mistress." I screw myself about, and twist, and turn in great perplexity--Hard enough all this, and I am half inclined to try to throttle Conscience outright.

But to make a long story short--I was resolute--"Step into the parlour, my dearest I hope we shall never part any more; but you must not get the upper hand, you know. So step into the other room, and whenever I get my inexpressibles on, I will come to you there."

But this Conscience, about which I am now hovering, seldom acts the monitor in this way, unless against respectable crimes, such as murder, debauching your friend's wife, or stealing. But the chield I have to do with for the present, and who has led to this rigmarole, is a sort of deputy Conscience, a looker--out after small affairs--peccadilloes. The grewsome carle, Conscience Senior, you can grapple with, for he only steps forth on great occasions, when he says sternly--and the mischief is, that what he says, we know to be true--says he, "Thomas Cringle"--he never calls me Tom, or Mister, or Lieutenant--"Thomas Cringle," says he, "if you do that thing, you shall be d.a.m.ned." "Lud-a mercy," quoth I, Thomas, "I will perpend, Master Conscience" and I set myself to eschew the evil deed, with all my might. But Conscience the Younger--whom I will take leave to call by Quashie's appellative hereafter, Conshy--is a funny little fellow, and another guess sort oft a chap altogether. An instance--"I say, Tom, my boy--Tom Cringle--why the deuce now"--he won't say "the Devil" for the world--"Why the deuce, Tom, don't you confine yourself to a pint of wine at dinner, eh?" quoth Conshy. "Why will you not give up your toddy after it? You are ruining your interior, Thomas, my fine fellow--the gout is on the look out for you, your legs are spindling, and your paunch is increasing. Read Hamlet's speech to Polonius, Tom, and if you don't find all the marks of premature old age creeping on you, then am I, Conshy, a Dutchman, that's all." Now Conshy always lectures you in the watches of the night; I generally think his advice is good at breakfast time, and during the forenoon, egad, I think it excellent and most reasonable, and I determine to stick by it and if Conshy and I dine alone, I do adhere to his maxims most rigidly; but if any of my old allies should topple in to dinner, Conshy, who is a solitary mechanic, bolts instanter. Still I remember him for a time--we sit down--the dinner is good. "I say, Jack, a gla.s.s of wine, Peter what shall we have?" and until the pint a-piece is discussed, all is right between Conshy and I. But then comes some grouse. Hook, in his double-refined nonsense, palavers about the blasphemy of white wine after brown game--and he is not far wrong either;--at least I never thought he was, so long as my Hermitage lasted; but at the time I speak of, it was still to the fore--so the moment the pint a-piece was out, "Hold hard, Tom, now," cheeps little Conshy. "Why, only one gla.s.s of Hermitage, Conshy." Conshy shakes his head. Cheese--after the manner of the ancients--Hook again--"Only one gla.s.s of port, Conshy." He shakes his head, and at length the cloth is drawn, and a confounded old steward of mine, who is now installed as butler, brings in the crystal decanters, sparkling to the wax lights poor as I am, I consider mutton fat still d.a.m.nable--and every thing as it should be, down to a finger-gla.s.s. "Now, Mary, where are the children?" I am resolute. "Jack, I can't drink--out of sorts, my boy so mind yourself, you and Peter.--Now, Conshy," says I, "where are you now, my boy?" But just at this instant, jack strikes out, with "Cringle, order me a tumbler--something hot--I don't care what it is."--"Ditto,"

quoth Peter; and down crumbles all my fine fabric of resolutions, only to be rebuilt tomorrow, before breakfast again, or at any odd moment, when one's flesh is somewhat fishified. Another instance. "I say, Tom,"

says Conshy, "do give over looking at that smart girl tripping it along t'other side of the street."--"Presently, my dear little man," says I.

"Tight little woman that, Conshy; handsome bows; good bearings forward; tumbles home sweetly about the waist, and tumbles out well above the hips; what a beautiful run! and spars clean and tight; back-stays well set up."--"Now, Tom, you vagabond, give over. Have you not a wife of your own?"--"To be sure I have, Conshy, my darling; but toujours per"

"Have done, now, you are going too far," says Conshy.--"Oh, you be--".

"Thomas," cries a still stern voice, from the very inmost recesses of my heart. Wee Conshy holds up his finger, and p.r.i.c.ks his ear. "Do you hear him?" says he.--"I hear," says I, "I hear and tremble." Now, to apply. Conshy has been nudging me for this half hour to hold my tongue regarding Aaron Bang's sea-sickness.--"It is absolutely indecent,"

quoth he. "Can't help it, Conshy; no more than the extra tumbler; those who are delicate need not read it; those who are indelicate won't be the worse of it."--"But," persists Conshy--"I have other hairs in your neck, Master Tommy--you are growing a bit of a buffoon on us, and sorry am I to say it, sometimes not altogether, as a man with a rank imagination may construe you, a very decent one. Now, my good boy, I would have you to remember that what you write is condemned in the pages of Old Christopher to an amber immortalization," (Ohon for the Provost!) "nay, don't perk and smile, I mean no compliment, for you are but the straw in the amber, Tom, and the only wonder is, how the deuce you got there."

"But, my dear Conshy"

"Hold your tongue, Tom--let me say out my say, and finish my advice--and how will you answer to my father, in your old age, when youth, and health, and wealth, may have flown, if you find any thing in this your Log calculated to bring a blush on an innocent cheek, Tom, when the time shall have for ever pa.s.sed away wherein you could have remedied the injury? For Conscience will speak to you then, not as I do now, in friendly confidence, and impelled by a sincere regard for you, you right hearted, but thoughtless, slapdash vagabond."

There must have been a great deal of absurd perplexity in my visage, as I sat receiving my rebuke, for I noticed Conshy smile, which gave me courage.

"I will reform, Conshy, and that immediately; but my moral is good, man."

"Well, well, Tom, I will take you at your word, so set about it, set about it."

"But, Conshy--a word in your starboard lug--why don't you go to the fountain-head--why don't you try your hand in a curtain lecture on Old Kit North himself, the h.o.a.ry sinner who seduced me?"

Conshy could no longer contain himself; the very idea of Old Kit having a conscience of any kind or description whatever, so tickled him, that he burst into a most uproarious fit of laughter, which I was in great hopes would have choked him, and thus made me well quit of him for ever.

For some time I listened in great amazement, but there was something so infectious in his fun, that presently I began to laugh too, which only increased his cachinnation, so there were Conshy and I roaring, and shouting, with the tears running down our cheeks.

"Kit listen to me!--Oh, Lord"

"You are swearing, Conshy," said I, rubbing my hands at having caught him tripping.

"And enough to make a Quaker swear," quoth he, still laughing. "No, no, Kit never listens to me--why, he would never listen even to my father, until the gout and the Catholic Relief Bill, and last of all, the Reform Bill, broke him down, and softened his heart."

So there is an allegory for you, worthy of John Bunyan.

Next morning we got the breeze again, when we bore away for Santiago de Cuba, and arrived off the Moro Castle on the fifth evening at sunset, after leaving Port Royal harbour. The Spaniards, in their better days, were a kind of coral worms; wherever they planted their colonies, they immediately set to covering themselves in with stone and mortar; applying their own entire energies, and the whole strength of their Indian captives, first to the erection of a fort; their second object (postponed to the other only through absolute necessity) being then to build a temple to their G.o.d. Gradually vast fabrics appeared, where before there was nothing but one eternal forest, or a howling wilderness; and although it does come over one, when looking at the splendid moles, and firm-built bastions, and stupendous churches of the New World--the latter surpa.s.sing, or at the lest equalling in magnificence and grandeur those of Old Spain herself--that they are all cemented by the blood and sweat of millions of gentle Indians, of whose harmless existence in many quarters, they remain the only monuments, still it is a melancholy reflection to look back and picture to one's self what Spain was, and to compare her, in her high and palmy state, with what she is now--to compare her present condition even with what she was when, as a young midshipman, I first visited her glorious Transatlantic colonies.

Until the Peninsula was overrun by the French, Buenos Ayres, La Guayra, Porto Cavello, Maracaibo, Santa Martha, and that stronghold of the west, the key of the Isthmus of Darien, Cartagena de las Indias, with Porto Bello, and Vera Cruz, on the Atlantic sh.o.r.es of South America, were all prosperous and happy--"Llenas de plata;" and on the Western coast, Valparaiso, Lima, Panama, and San Bias, were thriving and increasing in population and wealth. England, through her colonies, was at that time driving a lucrative trade with all of them; but the demon of change was abroad, blown thither by the pestilent breath of European liberalism.

What a vineyard for Abbe Sieyes to have laboured in! Every Capitania would have become a purchaser of one of his cut and dried const.i.tutions.

Indeed he could not have turned them out of hand fast enough. The enlightened few, in these countries, were as a drop in the bucket to the unenlightened many; and although no doubt there were numbers of the former who were well-meaning men, yet they were one and all guilty of that prime political blunder, in common with our Whig friends at home, of expecting a set of semi-barbarians to see the beauty of, and to conform to, their newfangled codes of free inst.i.tutions, for which they were as ready as I am to die at this present moment. Bolivar, in his early fever of patriotism, made the same mistake, although his shrewd mind, in his later career, saw that a despotism, pure or impure--I will not qualify it--was your only government for the savages he had at one time dignified with the name of fellow-patriots. But he came to this wholesome conclusion too late; he tried backs it is true, but it would not do; the fiend had been unchained, and at length hunted him broken hearted into his grave.

But the men of mind tell us, that those countries are now going through the political fermentation, which by and by will clear, when the sediment will be deposited, and the different ranks will each take their acknowledged and undisputed stations in society; and the United States are once and again quoted against we of the adverse faction, as If there were the most remote a.n.a.logy between their population, originally composed of all the cleverest scoundrels of Europe, and the barbarians of Spanish America, where a few master spirits, all old Spaniards, did indeed for a season stick fiery off from the dark ma.s.s of savages amongst whom their lot was cast, like stars in a moonless night, but only to suffer a speedy eclipse from the clouds and storm which they themselves had set in motion. We shall see. The sc.u.m as yet is uppermost, and does not seem likely to subside, but it may boil over.

In Cuba, however, all was at the time quiet, and still is, I believe, prosperous, and that too without having come through this said blessed political fermentation.

During the night we stood off and on under easy sail, and next morning, when the day broke, with a strong breeze and a fresh shower, we were about two miles off the Moro Castle, at the entrance of Santiago de Cuba.

I went aloft to look round me. The sea-breeze blew strong, until it reached within half a mile of the sh.o.r.e, where it stopped short, shooting in cat's-paws occasionally into the smooth belt of water beyond, where the long unbroken swell rolled like molten silver in the rising sun, without a ripple on its surface, until it dashed its gigantic undulations against the face of the precipitous cliffs on the sh.o.r.e, and flew up in smoke. The entrance to the harbour is very narrow, and looked from my perch like a zig-zag chasm in the rock, inlaid at the bottom with polished blue steel; so clear, and cahn, and pellucid was the still water, wherein the frowning rocks, and magnificent trees on the banks, and the white Moro, rising with its grinning tiers of cannon, battery above battery, were reflected veluti in speculum, as if it had been in a mirror.

We had shortened sail, and fired a gun, and the signal for a pilot was flying, when the Captain hailed me. "Does the sea breeze blow into the harbour yet, Mr Cringle?"

"Not yet, sir; but it is creeping in fast."

"Very well. Let me know when we can run in. Mr Yerk, back the main topsail, and heave the ship to."

Presently the pilot canoe, with the Spanish flag flying in the stem, came alongside; and the pilot, a tall brown man, a Moreno, as the Spaniards say, came on board. He wore a glazed c.o.c.ked hat, rather an out-of-the-way finish to his figure, which was rigged in a simple Osnaburg shirt, and pair of trowsers. He came on the quarterdeck, and made his bow to the captain with all the ease in the world, wished him a good morning, and taking his place by the quartermaster at the conn, he took charge of the ship. "Senor," quoth he to me, "is de harbour blow up yet? I mean, you see de viento walking into him?--de terral--dat is land-wind--has he cease?"

"No," I answered; "the belt of smooth water is growing narrower fast; but the sea breeze does not blow into the channel yet. Now it has reached the entrance."

"Ah, den make sail, Senior Capitan; fill de main-topsail." We stood in, the scene becoming more and more magnificent as we approached the land.

The fresh green sh.o.r.es of this glorious island lay before us, fringed with white surf, as the everlasting ocean in its approach to it gradually changed its dark blue colour, as the water shoaled, into a bright joyous green under the blazing sun, as if in sympathy with the genius of the fair land, before it tumbled at his feet its gently swelling billows, in shaking thunders on the reefs and rocky face of the coast, against which they were driven up in clouds, the incense of their sacrifice. The undulating hills in the vicinity were all, either cleared, and covered with the greenest verdure that imagination can picture, over which strayed large herds of cattle, or with forests of gigantic trees, from amongst which, every now and then, peeped out some palm thatched mountain settlement, with its small thread of blue smoke floating up into the calm clear morning air, while the blue hills in the distance rose higher and higher, and more and more blue, and dreamy, and indistinct, until their rugged summits could not be distinguished from the clouds through the glimmering hot haze of the tropics.

"By the mark seven," sung out the leadsman in the starboard chains.

"Quarter less three," responded he in the larboard, showing that the inequalities of the surface at the bottom of the sea, even in the breadth of the ship, were at least as abrupt as those presented above water by the sides of the natural ca.n.a.l into which we were now running.

By this time, on our right hand, we were within pistol shot of the Moro, where the channel is not above fifty yards across; indeed there is a chain, made fast to a rock on the opposite side, that can be hove up by a capstan until it is level with the water, so as to const.i.tute an insurmountable obstacle to any attempt to force an entrance in time of war. As we stood in, the golden flag of Spain rose slowly on the staff at the Water Battery, and Cast its large sleepy folds abroad in the breeze; but, instead of floating over mailclad men, or Spanish soldiers in warlike array, three poor devils of half naked mulattoes stuck their heads out of an embrasure under its shadow. "Senor Capitan," they shouted, 'una Botella de Roma, por el honor del pais.' We were mighty close upon leaving the bones of the old ship here, by the by; for at the very instant of entering the harbour's mouth, the land wind checked us off, and very nearly hove us broadside on upon the rocks below the castle, against which the swell was breaking in thunder.

"Let go the anchor," sung out the captain.

"All gone, sir," promptly responded the boatswain from the forecastle.

And as he spoke, we struck once, twice, and very heavily the third time.

But the breeze coming in strong, we fetched away again; and as the cable was promptly cut, we got safely off. However, on weighing the anchor afterwards, we found the water had been so shoal under the bows, that the ship, when she stranded, had struck it, and broken the stock short off by the ring. The only laughable part of the story consisted in the old cook, an Irishman, with one leg and half an eye, scrambling out of the galley nearly naked, in his trowsers, shirt, and greasy nightcap, and sprawling on all fours after two tubsful of yams, which the third thump had capsized all over the deck. "Oh you scurvy-looking tief,"

said he, eying the pilot; "if it was running us ash.o.r.e you were set on, why the blazes couldn't ye wait until the yams, were in the copper, bad luck to ye--and them all sc.r.a.ped too! I do believe, if they even had been taties, it would have been all the same to you." We stood on, the channel narrowing still more the rocks rising to a height of at least five hundred feet from the water's edge, as sharply and precipitously as if they had only yesterday been split asunder; the splintered projections and pinnacles on one side, having each their corresponding fissures and indentations on the other, as if the hand of a giant could have closed them together again.

n.o.ble trees shot out in all directions wherever they could find a little earth and a crevice to hold on by, almost meeting overhead in several places, and alive with all kinds of birds and beasts incidental to the climate; parrots of all sorts, great and small, clomb, and hung, and fluttered amongst the branches; and pigeons of numberless varieties; and the glancing woodp.e.c.k.e.r, with his small hammer like tap, tap, tap; and the West India nightingale, and humming birds of all hues; while cranes, black, white, and grey, frightened from their fishing-stations, stalked and peeped about, as awkwardly as a warrant-officer in his long skirted coat on a Sunday; while whole flocks of ducks flew across the mastheads and through the rigging; and the dragon-like guanas, and lizards of many kinds, disported themselves amongst the branches, not lazily or loathsomely, as we, who have only seen a lizard in our cold climate, are apt to picture, but alert, and quick as lightning, their colours changing with the changing light or the hues of the objects to which they clung, becoming literally in one respect portions of the landscape.

And then the dark, transparent crystal depth of the pure waters under foot, reflecting all nature so steadily and distinctly, that in the hollows, where the overhanging foliage of the laurel-like bushes darkened the scene, you could not for your life tell where the elements met, so blended were earth and sea.

"Starboard," said I. I had now come on deck. "Starboard, or the main topgallant-masthead will befoul of the limb of that tree. Foretop, there--lie out on the larboard fore-yardarm, and be ready to shove her off, if she sheers too close."

"Let go the anchor," struck in the first lieutenant.

Splash--the cable rumbled through the hause-hole.

"Now here are we brought up in paradise," quoth the doctor.

"Curukity coo-curukity coo," sung out a great bushy-whiskered sailor from the crows nest, who turned out to be no other than our old friend Timothy Tailtackle, quite juvenilffied by the laughing scene. "Here am I, Jack, a b.o.o.by amongst the singing-birds," crowed he to one of his messmates in the maintop, as he clutched a branch of a tree in his hand, and swung himself up into it. But the ship, as Old Nick would have it, at the very instant dropped astern a yew yards in swinging to her anchor, and that so suddenly, that she left him on his perch in the tree, converting his jest, poor fellow, into melancholy earnest. "Oh Lord, sir!" sung out Timotheus, in a great quandary. "Captain, do heave ahead a bit--Murder--I shall never get down again! Do, Mr Yerk, if you please, sir!" And there he sat twisting and craning himself about, and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g his features into combinations evincing the most comical perplexity.

The captain, by the way of a bit of fun, pretended not to hear him.

"Maintop, there," quoth he.

The midshipman in the top answered him, "Ay, ay, sir."

"Not you, Mr Reefpoint; the captain of the top I want."

"He is not in the top, sir," responded little Reefpoint, chuckling like to choke himself.

"Where the devil is he, sir?"

"Here, sir," squealed Timothy, his usual gruff voice spindling into a small cheep through his great perplexity. "Here, sir."