Tom Cringle's Log

by Michael Scott

  “Will the awning not do, sir?”

  “To be sure it will,” said I—it did not occur to me. “Get the awning triced up to the stancheons, and tell my steward to get the beds on deck—a few flags to shut us in will make the thing complete.”

  It was done; and while the sharp cries of the wounded who were immediately under the knife of the doctor, and the low moans of those whose wounds had been dressed, or were waiting their turn, reached our ears distinctly through the small skylight, our beds were arranged on deck under the shelter of the awning, a curtain of flags veiling our quarters from the gaze of the crew. Paul Gelid and Pepperpot occupied the starboard side of the little vessel, Aaron Bang and myself the larboard. By this time it was close on eight o’clock in the evening. I had merely looked in on our friends, ensconced as they were in their temporary hurricane-house; for I had more work than I could accomplish on deck in repairing damages. Most of our standing, and great part of our running rigging, had been shot away, which the tired crew were busied in splicing and knotting the best way they could. Our mainmast was very badly wounded close to the deck. It was fished as scientifically as our circumstances admitted. The foremast had fortunately escaped—it was untouched; but there were no fewer than thirteen round-shot through our hull, five of them between wind and water.

  When everything had been done which ingenuity could devise, or the most determined perseverance execute, I returned to our canvass shed aft, and found Mr Wagtail sitting on the deck, arranging with the help of my steward, the supper equipment to the best of his ability. Our meal, as may easily be imagined, was frugal in the extreme—salt beef, biscuit, some roasted yams, and cold grog—some of Aaron’s excellent rum. But I mark it down, that I question if any one of the four who partook of it ever made so hearty supper before or since. We worked away at the junk until we had polished the bone clean as an elephant’s tusk, and the roasted yams disappeared in bushelfuls; while the old rum sank in the bottle, like mercury in the barometer indicating an approaching gale.

  “I say, Tom,” quoth Aaron, “how do you feel, my boy?”

  “Why, not quite so buoyant as I could wish. To me it has been a day of fearful responsibility.”

  “And well it may,” said he. “As for myself, I go to rest with the tremendous consciousness that even I, who am not a professional butcher, have this blessed day shed more than one fellow-creature’s blood—a trembling consideration— and all for what, Tom? You met a big ship in the dark, and desired her to stop. She said she would not. You said, ‘You shall.’ She rejoined, ‘I’ll be d——d if I do.’ And thereupon you set about compelling her; and certainly you have interrupted her course to some purpose, at the trivial cost of the lives of only five or six hundred human beings, whose hearts were beating cheerily in their bosoms within these last six hours, but whose bodies are now food for fishes.”

  I was stung. “At your hands, my dear sir, I did not expect this, and—”

  “Hush,” said he, “I don’t blame you—it is all right; but why will not the Government at home arrange by treaty that this nefarious trade should be entirely put down? Surely all our victories by sea and land might warrant our stipulating for so much, in place of hugger-muggering with doubtful ill-defined treaties, specifying that you John Crapeau, and you Jack Spaniard, shall steal men, and deal in human flesh, in such and such a degree of latitude only, while if you pick up one single slave a league to the northward or southward of the prescribed line of coast, then we shall blow you out of the water wherever we meet you. Why should poor devils, who live in one degree of latitude, be allowed to be kidnapped, whilst we make it felony to steal their immediate neighbours?” Aaron waxed warm as he proceeded—”Why will not Englishmen lend a hand to put down the slave-trade amongst our opponents in sugar-growing, before they so recklessly endeavour to crush slavery in our own worn-out colonies, utterly regardless of our rights and lives? Mind, Tom, I don’t defend slavery—I sincerely wish we could do without it; but am I to be the only one to pay the piper in compassing its extinction? If, however, it really be that Upas-tree, under whose baleful shade every kindly feeling in the human bosom, whether of master or servant, withers and dies, I ask, Who planted it? If it possess the magical, and incredible, and most pestilential quality that the English gentleman, who shall be virtuous and beneficent, and just in all his ways, before he leaves home, and after he returns home, shall, during his temporary sojourn within its influence, become a very Nero for cruelty, and have his warm heart of flesh smuggled out of his bosom by some hocus pocus utterly unintelligible to any unprejudiced rational being, or indurated into the flint of the nether millstone, or frozen into a lump of ice—”

  “Lord!” ejaculated Wagtail, “only fancy a snowball in a man’s stomach, and in Jamaica too!”

  Hold your tongue, Waggy, my love,” continued Aaron; “if all this were so, I would again ask, Who planted it?—Say not that we did it—I am a planter, but I did not plant slavery. I found it growing and flourishing, and fostered by the Government, and made my home amongst the branches like a respectable corbie craw, or a pelican in a wild-duck’s nest, with all my pretty little tender black branchers hopping about me, along with numberless other unfortunates, and now find that the tree is being uprooted by the very hands that planted and nourished it, and seduced me to live in it, and all—”

  I laughed aloud—”Come, come, my dear sir, you are a perfect Lord Castlereagh in the congruity of your figures. How the deuce can any living thing exist among the poisonous branches of the Upas-tree—or a wild-duck build—”

  “Get along with your criticism, Tom, and don’t laugh—hang it, don’t laugh—but who told you that a corbie cannot?”

  “Why there are no corbies in Java.”

  “Pah—botheration—there are pelicans then; but you know it is not an Upas-tree, you know it is all a chimera, and, like the air-drawn dagger of Macbeth, ‘that there is no such thing.’ Now, that is a good burst, Gelid, my lad, ain’t it?” said Bang, as he drew a long breath, and again launched forth.

  “Our Government shall quarrel about sixpence here or sixpence there of discriminative duty in a foreign port, while they have clapped a knife to our throats, and a flaming fagot to our houses, by absurd edicts and fanatical intermeddling with our own colonies, where the slave-trade has notoriously, and to their own conviction, entirely ceased; while, I say it again, they will not put out their little finger to prevent, nay, they calmly look on and permit, a traffic utterly repugnant to all the best feelings of our nature, and baneful to an incalculable degree to our own West Indian possessions; provided, forsooth, the slaves be stolen within certain limits, which, as no one can prove, naturally leads to this infernal contraband, the suppression of which—Lord, what a thing to think of!—has nearly deprived the world of the invaluable services of me, Aaron Bang, Esquire, Member of Council of the Island of Jamaica, and Custos Rotulorum Populorum Jig of the Parish of—”

  “Lord,” said Wagtail, “why, the yam is not half done.”

  “But the rum is—ah!” drawled Gelid.

  “D——n the yam and the rum too,” rapped out Bang. “Why, you belly-gods, you have interrupted such a torrent of eloquence!”

  I began to guess that our friends were waxing peppery. “Why, gentlemen, I don’t know how you feel, but I am regularly done up—it is quite calm, and I hope we shall all sleep, so good-night.”

  We nestled in, and the sun had risen before I was called next morning. I hope

  “I rose a sadder and a wiser man,

  Upon that morrow’s morn.”

  “On deck, there,” said I, while dressing. Mr Peter Swop, one of the Firebrand’s master-mates, and now, in consequence of poor Handlead’s death, acting-master of the Wave, popped in his head through the opening in the flags. “How is the weather, Mr Swop?”

  “Calm all night, sir; not a breath stirring, sir.”

  “Are the sails shifted?” said I, “and the starboard main-shrouds replaced?”

 
“They are not yet, sir; the sails are on deck, and the rigging is now stretching, and will be all ready to be got over the masthead by breakfast-time, sir.”

  “How is her head?”

  “Why,” rejoined Swop, “it has been boxing all round the compass, sir, for these last twelve hours; at present it is northeast.”

  “Have we drifted much since last night, Mr Swop?”

  “No, sir—much where we were. There are several pieces of wreck and three dead bodies floating close to, sir.”

  By this time I was dressed, and had gone from under the awning on deck. The first thing I did was to glance my eye over the nettings, and there perceived on our quarter three dead bodies, as Mr Swop had said, floating—one a white Spaniard, and the other the corpses of two unfortunate Africans, who had perished miserably when the brig went down. The white man’s remains, swollen as they were from the heat of the climate and sudden putrefaction consequent thereon, floated quietly within pistol-shot, motionless and still; but the bodies of the two negroes were nearly hidden by the clustering sea-birds which perched on them. There were at least two dozen shipped on each carcass, busy with their beaks and claws, while on the other hand, the water in the immediate neighbourhood seemed quite, alive, from the rushing and walloping of numberless fishes, who were tearing the prey piecemeal. The view was anything but pleasant, and I naturally turned my eyes forward to see what was going on in the bows of the schooner. I was startled from the number of black faces which I saw.

  “Why, Mr Tailtackle, how many of these poor creatures have we on board?”

  “There are fifty-nine, sir, under hatches in the forehold,” said Timothy, “and thirty-five on deck; but I hope we shan’t have them long, sir. It looks like a breeze to windward. We shall have it before long, sir.”

  At this moment Mr Bang came on deck.

  “Lord, Tom, I thought it was a flea-bite last night, but, mercy! I am as stiff and sore as a gentleman need be. How do you feel? I see you have one of your fins in a sling—eh?”

  “I am a little stiff, certainly; however, that will go off; but come forward here, my dear sir; come here, and look at this shot-hole—saw you ever anything like that?”

  This was the smashing of one of our pumps from a round shot, the splinters from which were stuck into the bottom of the launch, which overhung it, forming really a figure very like the letter A.

  “Don’t take it to myself, Tom,—no, not at all.”

  At this moment the black savages on the forecastle discovered our friend, and shouts of “Sheik Cocoloo” rent the skies. Mr Bang, for a moment, appeared startled; so far as I could judge, he had forgotten that part of his exploit, and did not know what to make of it, until at last the actual meaning seemed to flash on him, when, with a shout of laughter, he bolted in through the opening of the flags to his former quarters below the awning. I descended to the cabin, breakfast having been announced, and sat down to our meal, confronted by Paul Gelid and Pepperpot Wagtail. Presently we heard Aaron sing out, the small scuttle being right overhead, “Pegtop, come here—Pegtop, I say help me on with my neckcloth—so—that will do; now I shall go on deck. Why, Pearl, my boy, what do you want?” and before Pearl could get a word in, Aaron continued, “I say, Pearl, go to the other end of the ship, and tell your Coromantee friends that it is all a humbug—that I am not the Sultan Cocoloo: furthermore, that I have not a feather in my tail like a palm-branch, of the truth of which I offer to give them ocular proof.”

  Pearl made his salaam. “Oh, sir, I fear that we must not say too much on that subject; we have not irons for one-half of them savage negirs” (the fellow was as black as a coal himself); “and were they to be undeceived, why, reduced as our crew is, they might at any time rise on and massacre the whole watch.”

  “The devil!” we could hear friend Aaron say; “oh, then, go forward, and assure them that I am a bigger ostrich than ever, and I shall astonish them presently, take my word for it. Pegtop, come here, you scoundrel,” he continued; “I say, Pegtop, get me out my uniform coat”—our friend was a captain of Jamaica militia—”so—and my sword—that will do; and here, pull off my trousers, it will be more classical to perambulate in my shirt, in case it really be necessary to persuade them that the palm-branch was all a figure of speech. Now, my hat—there; walk before me, and fan me with the top of that herring-barrel.”

  This was a lid of one of the wadding-tubs, which, to come up to Jigmaree’s notions of neatness, had been fitted with covers, and forth stumped Bang, preceded by Pegtop doing the honours. But the instant he appeared from beneath the flags, the same wild shout arose from the captive slaves forward, and such of them as were not fettered immediately began to bundle and tumble round our friend, rubbing their flat noses and woolly heads all over him, and taking hold of the hem of his garment, whereby his personal decency was so seriously perilled, that, after an unavailing attempt to shake them off, he fairly bolted, and ran for shelter once more under the awning, amidst the suppressed mirth of the whole crew, Aaron himself laughing louder than any of them all the while. “I say, Tom, and fellow-sufferers,” quoth he, after he had run to earth under the awning, and looking down the scuttle into the cabin where we were at breakfast, “how am I to get into the cabin? if I go out on the quarterdeck but one arm’s length in order to reach the companion, these barbarians will be at me again. Ah, I see!”

  Whereupon, without much more ado, he stuck his legs down through the small hatch right over the breakfast table, with the intention of descending, and the first thing he accomplished was to pop his foot into a large dish of scalding hominy, or hasty-pudding, made of Indian-corn meal, with which Wagtail was in the habit of commencing his stowage at breakfast. But this proving too hot for comfort, he instantly drew it out, and, in his attempt to reascend, he stuck his bespattered toe into Paul Gelid’s mouth. “Oh! oh!” exclaimed Paul, while little Wagtail lay back laughing like to die; but the next instant Bang gave another struggle, or wallop, like a pelloch in shoal-water, whereby Pepperpot borrowed a good kick on the side of the head, and down came the Great Ostrich, Aaron Bang, but without any feather in his tail, as I can avouch, slap upon the table, smashing cups and saucers and hominy, and devil knows what all, to pieces, as he floundered on the board. This was so absurd that we were all obliged to give uncontrolled course to our mirth for a minute or two, when, making the best of the wreck, we contrived to breakfast in tolerable comfort.

  Soon after the meal was finished, a light air enabled us once more to lie our course, and we gradually crept to the northward until twelve o’clock in the forenoon, after which time it fell calm again. I went down to the cabin; Bang had been overhauling my small library, when a shelf gave way (the whole affair having been injured by a round shot in the action, which had torn right through the cabin), so down came several scrolls, rolled up, and covered with brown paper.

  “What are all these?” I could hear our friend say.

  “They are my logs,” said I.

  “Your what?”

  “My private journals.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Aaron, “I will have a turn at them, with your permission. But what is this so carefully bound with red tape, and sealed, and marked—let me see, ‘Thomas Cringle, his Log-book.’”

  He looked at me.—”Why, my dear sir, to say the truth, this is my first attempt; full of trash, believe me;—what else could you expect from so mere a lad as I was when I wrote it?”

  “‘The child is father to the man,’ Tom, my boy; so, may I peruse it I may I read it for the edification of my learned allies, Pepperpot Wagtail and Paul Gelid, Esquires?”

  “Certainly,” I replied, “no objection in the world; but you will laugh at me, I know; still, do as you please—only, had you not better have your wound dressed first?”

  “My wound! Poo, poo! just enough to swear by—a fleabite—never mind it; so here goes”—and he read aloud what is detailed in the “Launching of the Log,” making his remarks with so much naïveté, that I daresay the
reader will be glad to hear a few of them. His anxiety, for instance, when he read of the young aide-de-camp being shot and dragged by the stirrup,* to know “what became of the empty horse,” was very entertaining; and when he had read the description of Davoust’s face and person, where I describe his nose† “as neither fine nor dumpy—a fair enough proboscis as noses go”—he laid down the Log with the most laughable seriousness.

  “Now,” quoth he, “very inexplicit all this, Tom. Why, I am most curious in noses. I judge of character altogether from the nose. I never lost sight of a man’s snout, albeit I never saw the tip of my own. You may rely on it that it is all a mistake to consider the regular Roman nose, with a curve like a shoemaker’s paring-knife, or the straight Grecian, with a thin transparent ridge that you can see through, or the Deutsch meerschaum, or the Saxon pump-handle, or the Scotch mull, or any other nose, that can be taken hold of, as the standard gnomon. No, no; I never saw a man with a large nose who was not a block-head—eh! Gelid, my love? But allons.”—And where, having introduced the German refugees to Captain Deadeye, I go on to say that I thereupon dived into the midshipmen’s berth for a morsel of comfort, and was soon “far into the secrets of a pork-pie,”§ he lay back, and exclaimed, with a long drawling emphasis, “A pork-pie!”

  “A pork-pie!” said Paul Gelid.

  “Why, do you know,” said Mr Wagtail—”I—why, I never in all my life saw a pork-pie.”

  “My dear Pepperpot,” chimed in Gelid, “we both forget. Don’t you remember the day we dined with the Admiral at the Pen, in July last?”

  “No,” said Wagtail, “I totally forgot it.” Bang, I saw, was all this while chuckling to himself. “I absolutely forget it altogether.”

  “Bless me,” said Gelid, “don’t you remember the beautiful calipeever we had that day?”

  “Really I do not,” said Pepperpot, “I have had so many good feeds there.”

  “Why,” continued Gelid, “Lord love you, Wagtail, not remember that calipeever, so crisp in the broiling!