“What do you think of that, Mr Bang—as well they might be, Mr Bang—as well they might be?” Bang said nothing, but at the moment—whether the said Aaron lent wings to the bird or no, I cannot tell—a goose, swimming in applesauce, which he was, with a most stern countenance, endeavouring to carve, fetched way right over the gunwale of the dish, and, taking a whole boat of melted butter with it, splashed across the table during a tremendous roll, that made everything creak and groan again, right into the small master’s lap, who was his vis-à-vis. I could hear Aaron grumble out something about—”Strange affinity—birds of a feather.” But his time was up, his minutes were numbered, and like a shot he bolted from the table, sculling or rather clawing away towards the door, by the backs of the chairs, like a green parrot, until he reached the marine at the bottom of the ladder, at the door of the captain’s cabin, round whose neck he immediately fetterlocked his fins.
He had only time to exclaim to his new ally, “My dear fellow, get me some brandy-and-water, for the love of mercy”—when he blew up, with an explosion like the bursting of a steam-boiler. “Oh dear, oh dear,” we could hear him murmuring in the lulls of his agony—then another loud report—”there goes my yesterday’s supper—hot grog and toasted cheese”—another roar, as if the spirit was leaving its earthly tabernacle—”dinner, claret, madeira—all cruel had in a second edition—cheese, teal, and ringtail pigeon—black crabs—calapi and turtle-soup”—as his fleshly indulgences of the previous day rose up in judgment against him, like a man’s evil deeds on his deathbed. At length the various strata of his interior were entirely excavated—”Ah!—I have got to my breakfast—to the simple tea and toast at last. Brandy-and-water, my dear Transom, brandy-and-water, my darling, hot, without sugar”—and “Brandy-and-water” died in echoes in the distance as he was stowed away into his cot in the captain’s cabin. It seems that it had been all arranged between him and Captain Transom, that he was to set off for St Thomas-in-the-East the morning on which we sailed, and to get a shove out in the pilot-boat schooner, from Morant Bay, to join us for the cruise; and accordingly he had come on board the night previous when I was below, and being somewhat qualmish he had wisely kept his cot; the fun of the thing depending, as it seemed, on all hands carefully keeping it from me that he was on board.
I apprehend most people indulge in the fancy that they have Consciences— such as they are. I myself now—even I, Thomas Cringle, Esquire—amongst sundry vain imaginings, conceive that I have a conscience—somewhat of the caoutchouc order, I will confess—stretching a little upon occasion, when the gale of my passions blows high—nevertheless a highly respectable conscience as things go—a stalwart unchancy customer, who will not be gainsaid or contradicted; but he may be disobeyed, although never with impunity. It is all true that a young, well-fledged gentlewoman, for she is furnished with a most swift pair of wings, called Prosperity, sometimes gets the better of Master Conscience, and smothers the Grim Feature for a time—under the bed of eider-down whereon you and her ladyship are reposing. But she is a sad jilt in many instances, this same Prosperity; for some fine morning, with the sun glancing in through the crevices of the window-shutters, just at the nick when, after turning yourself and rubbing your eyes, you courageously thrust forth one leg, with a determination to don your gramashes without more delay,—”Tom,” says she, “Tom Cringle, I have got tired of you, Thomas; besides, I hear my next-door neighbour, Madam Adversity, tirling at the door-pin; so give me my down-bed, Tom, and I’m off.” With that she bangs open the window, and, before I recover from my surprise, launches forth with a loud whir, mattress and all, leaving me, Pilgarlic, lying on the paillasse. Well, her nest is scarcely cold, when in comes Mistress Adversity, a wee, outspoken, sour, crab-bit, gizzened anatomy of an old woman—”You ne’erdoweel, Tam,” quoth she, “is it no’ enough that you consort with that scarlet limmer, who has just yescaped thorough the winday, but ye maun smoor my first-born, puir Conscience, atween ye? Whare hae ye stowed him, man—tell me that?” And the ancient damosel gives me a shrewd clip on the skull with the poker. “That’s right, mother,” quoth Conscience, from beneath the straw mattress,—”Give it to him—he’ll no hear me—another devel, mother.” And I found that my own weight, deserted as I was by that—ahem—Prosperity, was no longer sufficient to keep him down. So up he rose, with a loud pech and while the old woman keelhauled me with a poker on one side, he yerked at me on the other, until at length he gave me a regular cross-buttock, and then between them they diddled me outright. When I was fairly floored, “Now, my man,” said Adversity, “I bear no spite; if you will but listen to my boy there, we shall be good friends still. He is never unreasonable. He has no objections to your consorting even with Madam Prosperity in a decent way; but he will not consent to your letting her get the better of you, nor to your doting on her, even to the giving her a share of your bed, when she should never be allowed to get farther than the servants’ hall, for she should be kept in subjection, or she’ll ruin you for ever, Thomas. Conscience is a rough lad, I grant you, and I am keen and snell also; but never mind, take his advice, and you’ll be some credit to your freens yet, ye scoonrel.” I did so, and the old lady’s visits became shorter and shorter, and more and more distant, until at length they ceased altogether; and once more Prosperity, like a dove with its heaven-borrowed hues all glowing in the morning sun, pitched one morning on my window-sill. It was in June. “Tom, I am come back again.” I glowered at her with all my bir. “Aiblins,” said I, but I could go no farther. She made a step or two towards me, and the lesson of Adversity was fast evaporating into thin air, when lo! the sleeping lion himself awoke. “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 havering, 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 damned.” “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 of 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 alo
ne, 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 glass of wine—Peter, what shall we have?” and until the pint apiece is discussed, all is right between Conshy and me. 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 glass of Hermitage, Conshy.” Conshy shakes his head. Cheese—after the manner of the ancients—Hook again—”Only one glass 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 fats damnable—and everything as it should be, down to a finger-glass. “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 pricks 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 seasickness.—”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 immortalisation,” (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 anything in this your Log, calculated to bring a blush on an innocent cheek, Tom, when the time shall have for ever passed 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 hoary 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!—O 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 God. 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 surpassing, or at the least 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, Laguayra, 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 shores of South America, were all prosperous and happy—”Llenas de plata;” and on the western coast, Valparaiso, Lima, Panama, and San Blas, 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 Abbé Sièyes to have laboured in! Every Capitania would have become a purchaser of one of his cut and dried constitutions; 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 institutions, 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 back, 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 analogy 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 mass 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 scum 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.
Tom Cringle's Log Page 35
