I went aloft to look round me. The sea-breeze blew strong, until it reached within half a mile of the shore, 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 shore, and flew up in smoke. The entrance to the harbour is very narrow, and looked from my perch like a zigzag chasm in the rock, inlaid at the bottom with polished blue steel; so clear and calm 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 you 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 stern, came alongside; and the pilot, a tall brown man, a moreno, as the Spaniards say, came on board. He wore a glazed cocked-hat, rather an out-of-the-way finish to his figure, which was rigged in a simple Osnaburg shirt and pair of trousers. 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, took charge of the ship. “Señor,” 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.”
“All, den make sail, Señor Capitan; fill de main-topsail.” We stood in—the scene becoming more and more magnificent—as we approached the land.
The fresh green shores 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,” sang 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 canal 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 surface of the water, so as to constitute 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 mail-clad men, or Spanish soldiers in warlike array, three poor devils of half-naked mulattoes stuck their heads out of an embrasure under its shadow. “Señor 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,” sang 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 way 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 trousers, shirt, and greasy nightcap, and sprawling on all-fours after two tubfuls of yams, which the third thump had capsized all over the decks. “Oh, you scurvy-looking tief,” said he, eyeing the pilot; “if it was running us ashore 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 scraped 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.
Noble 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 woodpecker, with his small hammer-like tap, tap, tap; and the West India nightingale, and hummingbirds 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 be foul 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,” sang out a great bushy whiskered sailor from the crow’s nest,—who turned out to be no other than our old friend Timothy Tailtackle, quite juvenilified by the laughing scene. “Here am I, Jack, a booby 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 few 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. “O Lord, sir!” sang 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 screwing his features into combinations evincing the most comical perplexity.
The captain, by way of a bit of fun, pretended not to hear him.
“Maintop, there,” quoth be.
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.”
“What are you doing there, sir? Come down this moment, sir. Rig out the main-topmast-studdingsail-boom, Mr Reefpoint, and tell him to slew himself down by that long water-withe.”
To hear was to obey. Poor Timothy clambered down to the fork of the tree, from which the withe depended, and immediately began to warp himself down, until he reached within three or four yards of the starboard fore-topsail-yardarm; but the corvette still dropped astern, so that, after a vain attempt to hook on by his feet, he swung off into mid air, hanging by his hands.
It was no longer a joke. “Here, you black fellows in the pilot canoe,” shouted the captain, as he threw them a rope himself. “Pass the end of that line round the stump yonder—that one below the cliff, there; now, pull like devils—pull.”
They did not understand a word he said; but, comprehending his gestures, did what he wished.
“Now, haul on the line, men—gently, that will do. Missed it again,” continued the skipper, as the poor fellow once more made a fruitless attempt to swing himself on to the yard.
“Pay out the warp again,” sang out Tailtackle—”quick, quick! let the ship swing from under, and leave me scope to dive, or I shall be obliged to let go, and be killed on the deck.”
“God bless me, yes,” said Transom; “stick out the warp, let her swing to her anchor.”
In an instant all eyes were again fastened with intense anxiety on the poor fellow, whose strength was fast failing, and his grasp plainly relaxing.
“See all clear to pick me up, messmates.”
Tailtackle slipped down to the extreme end of the black withe, that looked like a scorched snake, pressed his legs close together, pointing his toes downwards, and then steadying himself for a moment, with his hands right above his head, and his arms at the full stretch, he dropped, struck the water fairly, entering its dark blue depths without a splash, and instantly disappeared, leaving a white frothy mark on the surface.
“Did you ever see anything better done?” said Yerk. “Why, he clipped into the water with the speed of light, as clean and clear as if he had been a marlinspike.”
“Thank Heaven!” gasped the captain; “for if he had struck the water horizontally, or fallen headlong, he would have been shattered in pieces—every bone would have been broken; he would have been as completely smashed as if he had dropped upon one of the limestone rocks on the iron-bound shore.”
“Ship, ahoy!” We were all breathlessly looking over the side where he fell, expecting to see him rise again; but the hail came from the water on t’other side. “Ship, ahoy!—throw me a rope, good people—a rope, if you please. Do you mean to careen the ship, that you have all run to the starboard side, leaving me to be drowned to port here?”
“Ah, Tailtackle! well done, old boy,” sang out a volley of voices, men and officers, rejoiced to see the honest fellow alive. He clambered on board, in the bight of one of twenty ropes that were hove to him.
When he came on deck, the captain slily said, “I don’t think you’ll go a-birdnesting in a hurry again, Tailtackle.”
Tim looked with a most quizzical expression at his captain, all blue and breathless and dripping as he was; and then, sticking his tongue slightly in his cheek, he turned away without addressing him directly, but murmuring as he went, “A glass of grog now.”
The captain, with whom he was a favourite, took the hint. “Go below now, and turn in till eight bells, Tailtackle. Mafame,” to his steward, “send him a glass of hot brandy-grog.”
“A northwester,” whispered Tim aside to the functionary; “half-and-half, Tallow Chops, eh!”
About an hour after this a very melancholy accident happened to a poor boy on board, of about fifteen years of age, who had already become a great favourite of mine from his modest, quiet deportment, as well as of all the gunroom officers, although he had not been above a fortnight in the ship. He had let himself down over the bows by the cable to bathe. There were several of his comrades standing on the forecastle looking at him, and he asked one of them to go out on the spritsail-yard, and look round to see if there were any sharks in the neighbourhood; but all around was deep, clear, green water. He kept hold of the cable, however, and seemed determined not to put himself in harm’s way, until a wicked little urchin, who used to wait on the warrant-officers’ mess—a small meddling snipe of a creature, who got flogged in well-behaved weeks only once—began to taunt my little mild favourite.
“Why, you chicken-heart, I’ll wager a thimbleful of grog, that such a tailor as you are in the water can’t for the life of you swim out to the buoy there.”
“Never you mind, Pepperbottom,” said the boy, giving the imp the name he had richly earned by repeated flagellations. “Never you mind—I am not ashamed to show my naked hide, you know. But it is against orders in these seas to go overboard, unless with a sail under foot; so I shan’t run the risk of being tattooed by the boatswain’s mate, like some one I could tell of.”
“Coward,” muttered the little wasp, “you are afraid, sir;” and, the other boys abetting the mischief-maker, the lad was goaded to leave his hold of the cable and strike out for the buoy. He reached it, and then turned, and pulled towards the ship again, when he caught my eye.
“Who is that overboard? How dare you, sir, disobey the standing order of the ship? Come in, boy; come in.”
My hailing the little fellow shoved him off his balance, and he lost his presence of mind for a moment or two, during which he, if anything, widened his distance from the ship.
At this instant the lad on the spritsail-yard sang out quick and suddenly, “A shark, a shark!”
And the monster, like a silver pillar, suddenly shot up perpendicularly from out the dark-green depths of the sleeping pool, with the waters sparkling and hissing around him, as if he had been a sea-demon rushing on his prey.
“Pull for the cable, Louis,” shouted fifty voices at once—”pull for the cable.”
The boy did so—we all ran forward. He reached the cable—grasped it with both hands, and hung on, but before he could swing himself out of the water, the fierce fish had turned. His whitish-green belly glanced in the sun—the poor little fellow gave a heart-splitting yell, which was shattered amongst the impending rocks into piercing echoes, and these again were reverberated from cavern to cavern, until they died away amongst the bellows in the distance, as if they had been the faint shrieks of the damned—yet he held fast for a second or two—the ravenous tyrant of the sea tug, tugging at him, till the stiff, taut cable shook again. At length he was torn from his hold, but did not disappear; the animal continuing on the surface crunching his prey with his teeth, and digging at him with his jaws, as if trying to gorge a morsel too large to be swallowed, and making the water flash up in foam over the boats in pursuit by the powerful strokes of his tail, but without ever letting go his hold. The poor lad only cried once more—but such a cry—oh God, I never shall forget it!—and, could it be possible, in his last shriek, his piercing expiring cry, his young voice seemed to pronounce my name—at least so I thought at the time, and others thought so too. The next moment he appeared quite dead. No less than three boats had been in the wate
r alongside when the accident happened, and they were all on the spot by this time. And there was the bleeding and mangled boy, torn along the surface of the water by the shark, with the boats in pursuit, leaving a long stream of blood, mottled with white specks of fat and marrow in his wake. At length the man in the bow of the gig laid hold of him by the arm, another sailor caught the other arm, boat-hooks and oars were dug into and launched at the monster, who relinquished his prey at last, stripping off the flesh, however, from the upper part of the right thigh until his teeth reached the knee, where he nipped the shank clean off, and made sail with the leg in his jaws.
Poor little Louis never once moved after we took him in. I thought I heard a small still stern voice thrill along my nerves, as if an echo of the beating of my heart had become articulate. “Thomas, a fortnight ago you impressed that poor boy—who was, and now is not—out of a Bristol ship.” Alas! Conscience spoke no more than the truth.
Our instructions were to lie at St Jago until three British ships, then loading, were ready for sea, and then to convey them through the Caicos, or windward passage. As our stay was, therefore, likely to be ten days or a fortnight at the shortest, the boats were hoisted out, and we made our little arrangements and preparations for taking all the recreation in our power; and our worthy skipper, taut and stiff as he was at sea, always encouraged all kinds of fun and larking, both amongst the men and the officers, on occasions like the present. Amongst his other pleasant qualities he was a great boat-racer, constantly building and altering gigs and pulling-boats at his own expense, and matching the men against each other for small prizes. He had just finished what the old carpenter considered his chef-d’oeuvre, and a curious affair this same masterpiece was. In the first place, it was forty-two feet long over all, and only three-and-a-half feet beam; the planking was not much above an eighth of an inch in thickness, so that, if one of the crew had slipped his foot off the stretcher, it must have gone through the bottom. There was a standing order that no man was to go into it with shoes on. She was to pull six oars, and her crew were the captains of the tops, the primest seamen in the ship, and the steersman, no less a character than the skipper himself.
Tom Cringle's Log Page 36
