Mr Bang, as I have said, had rallied by this time, and, with the tact of a gentleman, appeared to have forgotten whether his new ally was black, blue, or green, while the claret, stimulating him into self-possession, was evaporating in broken French. But his man, Pegtop, had been pushed off his balance altogether; his equanimity was utterly gone. When the young officer brushed passed him, at the first go off, while he was rinsing some glasses in the passage, his sword banged against Pegtop’s derrière as he stooped down over his work. He started and looked round, and merely exclaimed—”Eigh, Massa Niger, wurra dat!” But now, when standing behind his master’s chair, he saw the aide-de-camp consorting with him, whom he looked upon as the greatest man in existence, on terms of equality, all his faculties were paralysed.
“Pegtop,” said, “I hand me some yam, if you please.”
He looked at me all agape, as if he had been half strangled.
“Pegtop, you scoundrel!” quoth Massa Aaron, “don’t you hear what Captain Cringle says, sir?”
“Oh yes, massa;” and thereupon the sable valet brought me a bottle of fish-sauce, which he endeavoured to pour into my wineglass. All this while Eugenie and the aide-de-camp were playing the agreeable—and in very good taste, too, let me tell you.
I had just drunk wine with mine host, when I cast my eye along the passage that led out of the room, and there was Pegtop dancing and jumping and smiting his thigh, in an ecstasy of laughter, as he doubled himself up, with the tears welling over his cheeks.
“O Lord! Oh!—Massa Bang bow, and make face, and drink wine, and do everyting shivil, to one dam black rascall nigger!—Oh, blackee more worser dan me, Gabriel Pegtop—O Lard!—ha! ha! ha!”—Thereupon he threw himself down in the piazza, amongst plates and dishes, and shouted and laughed in a perfect frenzy, until Mr Bang got up, and thrust the poor fellow out of doors, in a pelting shower, which soon so far quelled the hysterical passion, that he came in again, grave as a judge, and took his place behind his master’s chair once more, and everything went on smoothly. The aide-de-camp, who appeared quite unconscious that he was the cause of the poor fellow’s mirth, renewed his attentions to Eugenie; and Mr Bang, M. B——, and myself, were again engaged in conversation, and our friend Pegtop was in the act of handing a slice of melon to the black officer, when a file of soldiers with fixed bayonets, stepped into the piazza, and ordered arms, one taking up his station on each side of the door. Presently another aide-de-camp, booted and spurred, dashed after them and, as soon as he crossed the threshold, sang out, “Place pour Monsieur le Baron.”
The electrical nerve was again touched—”Oh!—oh!—oh! Garamighty! here comes anoder on dem,” roared Pegtop, sticking the slice of melon, which was intended for Mademoiselle Eugenie, into his own mouth, to quell the paroxysm, if possible (while he fractured the plate on the black aide’s skull), and immediately blew it out again, with an explosion, and a scattering of the fragments, as if it had been the blasting of a stone quarry.
“Zounds, this is too much!” exclaimed Bang, as he rose and kicked the poor fellow out again with such vehemence, that his skull, encountering the paunch of our friend the baron, who was entering from the street at that instant, capsized him outright, and away rolled his Excellency the Général de Division, Commandant de l’Arrondissement, &c. &c., digging his spurs into poor Pegtop’s transom, and sacréing furiously, while the black servant roared as if he had been harpooned by the very devil. The aides started to their feet—and one of them looked at Mr Bang and touched the hilt of his sword, grinding the word “satisfaction” between his teeth, while the other ordered the sentries to run the poor fellow, whose mirth had been so uproarious, through. However, he got off with one or two progues in a very safe place; and when Monsieur B——explained how matters stood, and that the “pauvre diable,” as the black baron coolly called him, was a mere servant, and an uncultivated creature, and that no insult was meant, we had all a hearty laugh, and everything rolled right again. At length the baron and his black tail rose to wish us a good-evening, and we were thinking of finishing off with a cigar and a glass of cold grog, when Monsieur B——’s daughter returned into the piazza very pale, and evidently much frightened. “Mon père,” said she—while her voice quavered from excessive agitation—”My father—why do the soldiers remain?”
We all peered into the dark passage, and there, true enough, were the black sentries at their posts beside the doorway, still and motionless as statues. Monsieur B——, poor fellow, fell back in his chair at the sight, as if he had been shot through the heart.
“My fate is sealed—I am lost—O Eugenie!” were the only words he could utter.
“No, no,” exclaimed the weeping girl, “God forbid—the baron is a kind-hearted man, King Henry cannot—no, no—he knows you are not disaffected, he will not injure you.”
Here one of the black aides-de-camp suddenly returned. It was the poor fellow who had been making love to Eugenie during the entertainment. He looked absolutely blue with dismay; his voice shook, and his knees knocked together as he approached our host.
He tried to speak, but could not. “O Pierre, Pierre,” moaned, or rather gasped Eugenie, “what have you come to communicate? what dreadful news are you the bearer of?” He held out an open letter to poor B——, who, unable to read it from excessive agitation, handed it to me. It ran thus:
MONSIEUR LE BARON,—Monsieur-has been arrested here this morning: he is a white Frenchman, and there are strong suspicions against him. Place his partner M. B—— under the surveillance of the police instantly. You are made answerable for his safe custody.
“Witness his Majesty’s hand and seal, at Sans Souci, this …
“THE COUNT——.”
“Then I am doomed,” groaned poor M. B——. His daughter fainted, the black officer wept, and, having laid his senseless mistress on a sofa, he approached and wrung B——’s hand. “Alas, my dear sir—how my heart bleeds! But cheer up—King Henry is just—all may be right—all may still be right; and so far as my duty to him will allow, you may count on nothing being done here that is not absolutely necessary for holding ourselves blameless with the Government.”
Enough and to spare of this. We slept on shore that night, and a very neat catastrophe was likely to have ensued thereupon. Intending to go on board ship at daybreak, I had got up and dressed myself, and opened the door into the street to let myself out, when I stumbled unwittingly against the black sentry, who must have been half asleep, for he immediately stepped several paces back, and, presenting his musket, the clear barrel glancing in the moonlight, snapped it at me. Fortunately it missed fire, which gave me time to explain that it was not M. B—— attempting to escape; but that day week he was marched to the prison of La Force, near Cape Henry, where his partner had been previously lodged; and from that hour to this, neither of them were ever heard of. Next evening I again went ashore, but I was denied admittance to him; and, as my orders were imperative not to interfere in any way, I had to return on board with a heavy heart.
The day following Captain Transom and myself paid a formal visit to the black baron, in order to leave no stone unturned to obtain poor B——’s release if we could. Mr Bang accompanied us. We found the sable dignitary lounging in a grass hammock (slung from corner to corner of a very comfortless room, for the floor was tiled, the windows were unglazed, and there was no furniture whatever but an old-fashioned mahogany sideboard and three wicker chairs) apparently half asleep, or ruminating after his breakfast. On our being announced by a half-naked negro servant, who aroused him, he got up and received us very kindly—I beg his lordship’s pardon, I should write graciously—and made us take wine and biscuit, and talked and rattled; but I saw he carefully avoided the subject which he evidently knew was the object of our visit. At length, finding it would be impossible for him to parry it much longer single-handed, with tact worthy of a man of fashion, he called out, “Marie! Marie!” Our eyes followed his, and we saw a young and very handsome brown lady r
ise, whom we had perceived seated at her work when we first entered, in a small, dark, back porch, and advance, after curtsying to us seriatim, with great elegance, as the old fat nigger introduced her to us as Madame la Baronne.”
“His wife?” whispered Aaron; “the old rank goat!”
Her brown ladyship did the honours of the wine-ewer with the perfect quietude and ease of a well-bred woman. She was a most lovely, clear-skinned, quadroon girl. She could not have been twenty; tall, and beautifully shaped. Her long coal-black tresses were dressed high on her head, which was bound round with the everlasting Madras handkerchief, in which pale blue was the prevailing colour; but it was elegantly adjusted, and did not come down far enough to shade the fine development of her majestic forehead—Pasta’s in Semiramide was not more commanding. Her eyebrows were delicately arched and sharply defined, and her eyes of jet were large and swimming; her nose had not utterly abjured its African origin, neither had her lips, but, notwithstanding, her countenance shone with all the beauty of expression so conspicuous in the Egyptian sphinx—Abyssinian, but most sweet; while her teeth were as the finest ivory, and her chin, and threat, and bosom, as if her bust had been an antique statue of the rarest workmanship. The only ornaments she wore were two large virgin gold ear-rings, massive yellow hoops without any carving, but so heavy, that they seemed to weigh down the small thin transparent ears which they perforated; and a broad black velvet band round her neck, to which was appended a large massive crucifix of the same metal. She also wore two broad bracelets of black velvet clasped with gold. Her beautifully moulded form was scarcely veiled by a cambric chemise, with exceedingly short sleeves, over which she wore a rose-coloured silk petticoat, short enough to display a finely-formed foot and ankle, with a well-selected pearl-white silk stocking, and a neat low-cut French black kid shoe. As for gown, she had none. She wore a large sparkling diamond ring on her marriage finger, and we were all bowing before the deity when our attention was arrested by a cloud of dust at the top of the street, and presently a solitary black dragoon sparked out from it, his accoutrements and headpiece blazing in the sun, then three more abreast, and immediately a troop of five-and-twenty cavaliers, or thereabouts, came thundering down the street. They formed opposite the Baron’s house, and I will say I never saw a better appointed troop of horse anywhere. Presently an aide-de-camp scampered up; and having arrived opposite the door, dismounted, and entering, exclaimed, “Les Comtes de Lemonade et Marmalade.”—”The who?” said Mr Pang; but presently two very handsome young men of colour, in splendid uniforms, rode up, followed by a glittering staff, of at least twenty mounted officers. They alighted, and entering, made their bow to Baron B——. The youngest, the Count Lemonade, spoke very decent English; and what between Mr Bang’s and my bad, and Captain Transom’s very good, French, we all made ourselves agreeable. I may state here that Lemonade and Marmalade are two districts of the island of St Domingo, which had been pitched on by Christophe to give titles to two of his fire-new nobility. The grandees had come on a survey of the district; and although we did not fail to press the matter of poor B——’s release, yet they either had no authority to interfere in the matter, or they would not acknowledge that they had, so we reluctantly took leave and went on shipboard.
“Tom, you villain,” said Mr Bang, as we stepped into the boat, “if my eye had caught yours when these noblemen made their entrée, I should have exploded with laughter, and most likely have had my throat cut for my pains. Pray, did his Highness of Lemonade carry a punch-ladle in his hand? I am sure I expected he of Marmalade to have carried a jelly-can! Oh, Tom, at the moment I heard them announced, my old dear mother flitted before my mind’s eye, with the bright, well-scoured, large brass pans in the background, as she superintended her handmaidens in their annual preservations.”
After the fruitless interview, we weighed, and sailed for Port-au-Prince, where we arrived the following evening.
I had heard much of the magnificence of the scenery in the Bight of Leogane, but the reality far surpassed what I had pictured to myself. The breeze, towards noon of the following day, had come up in a gentle air from the westward, and we were gliding along before it like a spread eagle, with all our light sails abroad to catch the sweet zephyr, which was not even strong enough to ruffle the silver surface of the land-locked sea that glowed beneath the blazing mid-day sun, with a dolphin here and there cleaving the shining surface with an arrowy ripple, and a brown-skinned shark glaring on us, far down in the deep, clear, green profound, like a water fiend, and a slow-sailing pelican overhead, after a long sweep on poised wing, dropping into the sea like lead, and flashing up the water like the bursting of a shell, as we sailed up into a glorious amphitheatre of stupendous mountains, covered with one eternal forest, that rose gradually from the hot sandy plains that skirted the shore; while what had once been smiling fields and rich sugar-plantations, in the long misty level districts at their bases, were now covered with brushwood, fast rising up into one impervious thicket; and, as the island of Gonave closed in the view behind us to seaward, the sun sank beyond it, amidst rolling masses of golden and blood-red clouds, giving token of a goodly day tomorrow, and gilding the outline of the rocky islet (as if to a certain depth it had been transparent) with a golden halo, gradually deepening into imperial purple. Beyond the shadow of the tree-covered islet, on the left hand, rose the town of Port-au-Prince, with its long streets rising like terraces on the gently swelling shore, while the mountains behind it, still gold-tipped in the declining sunbeams, seemed to impend frowningly over it —and the shipping in the roadstead at anchor off the town were just beginning to fade from our sight in the gradually increasing darkness— and a solitary light began to sparkle in a cabin window and then disappear, and to twinkle for a moment in the piazzas of the houses on shore like a will-of-the-wisp—and the chirping buzz of myriads of insects and reptiles was coming off from the island astern of us, borne on the wings of the light wind, which, charged with rich odours from the closing flowers, fanned us “like the sweet south, soft breathing o’er a bed of violets”—when a sudden flash and a jet of white smoke puffed out from the hill-fort above the town, the report thundering amongst the everlasting hills, and gradually rumbling itself away into the distant ravines and valleys, like a lion growling itself to sleep, and the shades of night fell on the dead face of nature like a pall, and all was undistinguishable. When I had written thus far—it was at Port-au-Prince, at Mr S——’s—Mr Bang entered—”Ah! I Tom—at the Log, polishing—using the plane—shaping out something for Ebony—let me see.”
Here our friend read the preceding paragraphs. They did not please him. “Don’t like it, Tom.”
“No? Pray, why, my dear sir?—I have tried to—”
“Hold your tongue, my good boy.
‘Cease, rude Boreas, blustering railer,
List, old ladies, o’er your tea,
At description Tom’s a tailor,
When he is compared to me.
Tooral looral loo.’
Attend—brevity is the soul of wit—ahem. Listen how I shall crush all your lengthy yarn into an eggshell. ‘The Bight of Leogane is a horseshoe—Cape St Nicholas is the caulker on the northern heel—Cape Tiberoon, the ditto on the south—Port-au-Prince is the tip at the toe towards the east—Gonaives, Leogane, Petit Trouve, &c. &c. &c., are the nails, and the island of Gonave is the frog.’ Now every human being who knows that a horse has four legs and a tail— of course this includes all the human race, excepting tailors and sailors—must understand this at once; it is palpable and plain, although no man could have put it so perspicuously, excepting my friend William Cobbett, or myself. By the way, speaking of horses, that blood thing of the old baron’s nearly gave you your quietus t’other day, Tom. Why will you always pass the flank of a horse in place of going ahead of him, to use your own phrase? Never ride near a led horse on passing when you can help it; give him a wide berth, or clap the groom’s corpus between you and his heels; and never, never g
o near the croup of any quadruped bigger than a cat, for even a cow’s is inconvenient, when you can by any possibility help it.”
I laughed—”Well, well, my dear sir,—but you undervalue my equestrian capability somewhat too, for I do pretend to know that a horse has four legs and a tail.”
There was no pleasing Aaron this morning, I saw.
“Then, Tummas, my man, you know a deuced deal more than I do. As for the tail, conceditur—but devilish few horses have four legs nowadays, take my word for it. However, here comes Transom; I am off to have a lounge with him, and I will finish the veterinary lecture at some more convenient season. Tol lol de rol.”—Exit singing.
The morning after this I went ashore at daylight, and, guided by the sound of military music, proceeded to the Place Republican, or square before President Petion’s palace, where I found eight regiments of foot under arms, with their bands playing, and in the act of defiling before General Boyer, who commanded the arrondissement. This was the garrison of Port-au-Prince; but neither the personal appearance of the troops, nor their appointments, were at all equal to those of King Henry’s well-dressed and well-drilled cohorts that we saw at Gonaives. The president’s guards were certainly fine men, and a squadron of dismounted cavalry, in splendid blue uniforms, with scarlet trousers richly laced, might have vied with the élite of Nap’s own, barring the black faces. But the materiel of the other regiments was not superfine,* as M. Boyer, before whom they were defiling, might have said.
I went to breakfast with Mr S——, one of the English merchants of the place, a kind and most hospitable man; and under his guidance, the captain, Mr Bang, and I, proceeded afterwards to call on Petion. Christophe, or King Henry, had some time before retired from the siege of Port-au-Prince, and we found the town in a very miserable state. Many of the houses were injured from shot; the president’s palace, for instance, was perforated in several places, which had not been repaired. In the antechamber you could see the blue heavens through the shot-holes in the roof. “Next time I come to court, Tom,” said Mr Bang, “I will bring an umbrella.” Turning out of the parade, we passed through a rickety, unpainted open gate, in a wall about six feet high; the space beyond was an open green or grass-plot, parched and burned up by the sun, with a common fowl here and there fluttering and hotching in the hole she had scratched in the arid soil; but there was neither sentry nor servant to be seen, nor any of the usual pomp and circumstance about a great man’s dwelling. Presently we were in front of a long, low, one-storey building, with a flight of steps leading up into an entrance-hall, furnished with several gaudy sofas and half-a-dozen chairs—with a plain wooden floor, on which a slight approach to the usual West India polish had been attempted, but mightily behind the elegant domiciles of my Kingston friends in this respect. In the centre of this room stood three young officers, fair mulattoes, with their plumed cocked-hats in their hands, and dressed very handsomely in French uniforms; and it always struck me as curious, that men who hated the very name of Frenchman, as the devil hates holy water, should copy all the customs and manners of the detested people so closely. I may mention here, once for all, that Petion’s officers, who, generally speaking, were all men of colour, and not negroes, were as much superior in education, and, I fear I must say, in intellect, as they certainly were in personal appearance, to the black officers of King Henry, as his soldiery were superior to those of the neighbouring black republic.
Tom Cringle's Log Page 55
