Tom Cringle's Log

by Michael Scott

“I shall believe in the story of Jack and the Beanstalk henceforth and for ever,” said I.

  We were most kindly entertained by Mr S——, and spent two or three days very happily. The evening of the day on which we arrived, we had strolled out about nine o’clock to take the air—our host and his clerks being busy in the counting-house—and were on our way home, when we looked in on them at their desks before ascending to the apartments above. There were five clerks and Mr S——, all working away on the top of their tall mahogany tripods, by the light of their brown homemade wax candles, while three masters of merchantmen were sitting in a corner, comparing bills of lading, making up manifests, and I do not know what beside.

  “It is now about time to close,” said Mr S-; “have you any objection to a little music, gentlemen? or are you too much fatigued?”

  “Music—music,” said Mr Bang; “I delight in good music, but—” He was cut short by the whole bunch, the clerks and their master, closing their ledgers and journals and day-books and cash-books with a bang, while one hooked up a fiddle, another a clarionet, another a flute, &c., while Mr S——offered, with a smile, his own clarionet to Massa Aaron, and holding out at the same time, with the true good-breeding of a Frenchman, a span-new reed. To my unutterable surprise he took it—sucked in his lips—wet the reed in his mouth; then passing his hand across his muzzle, coolly asked Mr S—— what the piece was to be? “Adeste fideles, if you please,” said S——, rather taken aback. Mr Bang nodded, sounded a bar or two, gave another very scientific flourish, and then calmly awaited the opening. He then tendered a fiddle to me—altogether beyond my compass—but I offered to officiate on the kettledrum, the drummer being competent to something else. At a signal from our host away they all launched, in full crash, and very melodious it was too, let me tell you, Aaron’s instrument telling most famously.

  The next day we went to visit a tafia property in the neighbourhood. On our way we passed a dozen miserable-looking blacks, cleaning canes, followed by an ugly Turk of a brown man, almost naked, with the omnipresent glazed cocked-hat, and a drawn cutlass in his hand. He was abusing the poor devils most lustily as we rode along, and stood so pertinaciously in the path that I could not for the life of me pass without jostling him. “Je vous demande pardon,” said I, with a most abject salaam to my saddle-bow. He knit his brows and shut his teeth hard, as he ground out between the glancing ivory, “Sacré! voila ces foutres blancs là,” clutching the hilt of his couteau firmly all the while. I thought he would have struck me. But Mr S——, coming up, mollified the savage, and we rode on.

  The tafia estate was a sore affair. It had once been a prosperous sugar-plantation, as the broken panes and ruined houses, blackened by fire, were melancholy vouchers for; but now the whole cultivation was reduced to about a couple of acres of wiry sugar-canes, and the boiling and distilling were carried on in a small unroofed nook of the original works.

  Two days after this we returned to Port-au-Prince, and I could not help admiring the justness of Aaron’s former description; for noisome exhalations were rising thick, as the evening sun shone hot and sickly on the long bank of fat black mud that covers the beach beneath the town. We found Captain Transom at Mr S——’s. I made my report of the state of the merchantmen loading on the south side of the island, and retired to rest, deucedly tired and stiff with my ride. Next morning Bang entered my room.

  “Hillo, Tom! the skipper has been shouting for you this half-hour; get up, man—get up.”

  “My dear sir, I am awfully tired.”

  “Oh!” sang Bang—

  “‘I have a silent sorrow here’—eh?”

  It was true enough; no sailor rides seventy miles on end with impunity. That same evening we bade adieu to our excellent host Mr S——, and the rising moon shone on us under weigh for Kingston, where two days after we safely anchored with the homeward-bound trade.

  “The roaring seas

  Is not a place of ease,”

  says a Point ditty. No more is the command of a small schooner in the West Indies. We had scarcely anchored when the boarding-officer from the flag-ship brought me a message to repair thither immediately. I did so. As I stepped on deck, the lieutenant was leaning on the drum-head of the capstan, with the signal-book open before him, while the signal-man was telling off the semaphore, which was rattling away at the Admiral’s pen, situated about five miles off.

  “Ah! Cringle,” said he, without turning his head, “how are you? glad to see you—wish you joy, my lad. Here lend me a hand, will you? it concerns you.” I took the book, and as the man reported, I pieced the following comfortable sentence together.

  “Desire—Wave—fit—wood—water—instantly—to take convoy—to Spanish Main—to-morrow morning—Mr Cringle—remain on board—orders will be sent—evening.”

  “Heigh ho, says Rowley,”

  sang I Thomas, in great wrath and bitterness of spirit, “D——d hard; am I a duck, to live in the water altogether, entirely?”

  “Tom, my boy,” sang out a voice from the water. It was Aaron Bang’s, who, along with Transom, had seen me go on board the receiving ship. “Come along, man—come along; Transom is going to make interest to get you a furlough on shore; so come along, and dine with us in Kingston.”

  “I am ordered to sea to-morrow morning, my dear sir,” said I, like to cry. “No!” “Too true, too true.” So no help for it, I took a sad farewell of my friends, received my orders, laid in my provisions and water, hauled out into the fairway, and sailed for Santa Martha next morning at daybreak, with three merchant schooners under convoy—one for Santa Martha, another for Carthagena, and the third for Porto-Bello.

  We sailed on the 24th of such a month, and, after a pleasant passage, anchored at Santa Martha at 8 A.M. on the 31st. When we came to anchor we saluted, which seemed to have been a somewhat unexpected honour, as the return was fired from the fort after a most primitive fashion. A black fellow appeared with a shovel of live embers, one of which another sans culotte caught up in his hand, chucking it from palm to palm until he ran to the breech of the first gun, where, clapping it on the touch-hole, he fired it off, and so on seriatim through the whole battery, until the required number of guns were given, several of which, by the by, were shotted, as we could hear the balls whiz overhead. The town lies on a small plain, at the foot of very high mountains, or rather on a sand-bank, formed from the washings from these mountains. The summit of the highest of them, we could see from the deck, was covered with snow, which at sunrise, in the clear light of the cool grey dawn, shone, when struck by the first rays of the sun, like one entire amethyst. Oh, how often I longed for the wings of the eagle, to waft me from the hot deck of the little vessel, where the thermometer in the shade stood at 95°, far up amongst the shining glaciers, to be comforted with cold!

  One striking natural phenomenon is exhibited here, arising out of the vicinity of this stupendous prong of the Cordilleras. The sea-breeze blows into the harbour all day, but in the night, or rather towards morning, the cold air from the high regions rushes down, and blows with such violence off the land, that my convoy and myself were nearly blown out to sea the first night after we arrived; and it was only by following the practice of the native craft, and anchoring close under the lee of the beach—in fact, by having an anchor high and dry on the shore itself—the playa, as the Spaniards call it—that we could count on riding through the night with security or comfort.

  There are several small islands at the entrance of the harbour, on the highest of which is a fort that might easily be rendered impregnable; it commands both the town and harbour. The place itself deserves little notice: the houses are mean, and interspersed with negro huts, but there is one fine church with several tolerable paintings in it. One struck me as especially grotesque, although I had often seen queer things in Roman Catholic churches in Europe. It was a representation of Hell, with Old Nicholas, under the guise of a dragon, entertaining himself with the soul of an unfortunate heretic in his claws, who
certainly appeared far from comfortable, while a lot of his angels were washing the sins off a set of fine young men, as you would the dirt off scabbit potatoes, in a sea of liquid fire. But their saints!—I often rejoiced that Aaron Bang was not with me; we should unquestionably have quarreled; for as to the manner in which they were dressed and decorated, the most fantastic mode a girl ever did up her doll in was a joke to it. Still these wooden deities are treated with such veneration, that I do believe their ornaments, which are of massive gold and silver, are never, or very rarely, stolen.

  On the evening of the 2d of the following month, we sailed again, but having been baffled by calms and light winds, it was the 4th before we anchored off the St Domingo gate at Carthagena, and next morning we dropped down to Boca Chica, and saw our charge, a fine dashing schooner of 150 tons, safe into the harbour. About 9 A.M. we weighed, but we had scarcely got the anchor catted, when it came on to blow great guns from the north-west—a most unusual thing hereabouts—so it was down anchor again; and as I had made up my mind not to attempt it again before morning, I got the gig in the water with all convenient speed; and that same forenoon I reached the town, and immediately called on the Viceroy, but under very different circumstances from the time Mr Splinter and I had entered it along with the conquering army.

  We dined with the magnate, and found a very large party assembled. Amongst others, I especially recollect that the Inquisidor-General was conspicuous; but every one, with the exception of the Captain-General and his immediate staff, was arrayed in gingham jackets; so there was not much style in the affair.

  I had before dinner an opportunity to inspect the works of Carthagena at my leisure. It is unquestionably a very strong place, the walls, which are built of solid masonry, being armed with at least three hundred pieces of brass cannon, while the continual ebb and flow of the tide in the ditch creates a current so strong, that it would be next to impossible to fill it up, as fascines would be carried away by the current; so that, were the walls even breached, it would be impracticable to storm them. The appearance of Carthagena from the sea— that is, from a vessel anchored off the St Domingo gate—is singularly beautiful and picturesque. It is situated on a sandy island, or rather a group of islands; and the beach here shoals so gradually, that boats of even a very small draught of water cannot approach within musket-shot. The walls and numerous batteries have a very commanding appearance. The spires and towers on the churches are numerous, and many of them were decorated with flags when we were there; and the green trees, shooting up amidst the red-tiled houses, afforded a beautiful relief to the prospect. A little behind the town, on a gentle acclivity, is the citadel, or Fort San Felipe, whose appearance conveys an idea of impregnable strength (but all this sort of thing, is it not written in Roderick Random?), and on the ship-like hill beyond it, the only other eminence in the neighbourhood, stands the convent of the Popa, like a poop lantern on the high stern of a ship, from which, indeed, it takes its name. This convent had been strongly fortified; and, commanding San Felipe, was of great use to Morillo, who carried it by assault during the siege, and held it until the insurgents shelled him out from the citadel. The effect, when I first saw it, was increased by the whole scene—city, and batteries, and Popa—being reflected in the calm smooth sea as distinctly as if it had been glass; so clear, in fact, was the reflection, that you could scarcely distinguish the shadow from the reality. We weighed next morning—that is, on the 6th of the month, and arrived safe at Porto-Bello on the 11th, after a tedious passage, during which we had continual rains, accompanied with vivid lightning and tremendous thunder. I had expected to have fallen in with one of our frigates here; but I afterwards learned that, although I had slid down cheerily along shore, the weather current that prevailed farther out at sea had swept her away to the eastward; so I ran in and anchored, and immediately waited on the Governor, who received me in what might once have been a barn, although it did not now deserve the name.—

  Porto-Bello was originally called Nombre de Dios, having received the former name from the English when we took it. It is a miserable, dirty, damp hole, surrounded by high, forest-clad hills, round which everlasting mists curl and obscure the sun, whose rays, at any chance moment when they do reach the steamy swamp on which it is built, or the waters of the lead-coloured landlocked cove that constitutes the harbour, immediately exhale a thick sickly moisture, in clouds of sluggish white vapours, smelling diabolically of decayed vegetables and slime and mud. I will venture a remark that will be found, I am persuaded, pretty near the truth, that there were twenty carrion crows to be seen in the streets for every inhabitant. The people seem every way worthy of such an abode—saffron, dingy, miserable, emaciated-looking devils. As for the place itself, it appeared to my eyes one large hospital, inhabited by patients in the yellow fever. During the whole of the following day there was still no appearance of the frigate, and I had in consequence now to execute the ulterior part of my orders, which were, that if I did not find her at anchor when I arrived, or if she did not make her appearance within forty-eight hours thereafter, I was myself to leave the Wave in Porto-Bello, and to proceed overland across the isthmus to Panama, and to deliver, on board of H. M. S. Bandera, into the captain’s own hands, a large packet with despatches from the Government at home, as I understood, of great importance, touching the conduct of our squadron, with reference to the vagaries of some of the mushroom American Republics on the Pacific. But if I fell in with the frigate, then I was to deliver the said packet to the captain, and return immediately in the Wave to Port Royal.

  Having, therefore, obtained letters from the Governor of Porto-Bello to the Commandant at Chagres, I chartered a canoe, with four stout canoemen and a steersman, or patron, as he is called, to convey me to Cruzes; and having laid in a good stock of eatables and drinkables, and selected the black pilot, Peter Mangrove, to go as my servant, accompanied by his never-failing companion, Sneezer, and taking my hammock and double-barrelled gun, and a brace of pistols with me, we shoved off at 6 A.M. on the morning, of the 14th.

  It was a rum sort of conveyance this said canoe of mine. In the first place, it was near forty feet long, and only five wide at the broadest, being hollowed out of one single wild cotton-tree; how this was to be pulled through the sea on the coast, by four men, I could not divine. However, I was assured by the old thief who chartered it to me, that it would be all right; whereas, had my innocence not been imposed on, I might, in a caiuco, or smaller canoe, have made the passage in one half the time it took me.

  About ten feet of the afterpart was thatched with palm leaves, over a framework of broad ash hoops; which awning, called the toldo, was open both towards the steersman that guided us with a long broad-bladed paddle in the stern, and in the direction of the men forward, who, on starting, stripped themselves stark naked, and, giving a loud yell every now and then, began to pull their oars, or long paddles, after a most extraordinary fashion. First, when they lay back to the strain, they jumped backwards and upwards on the thwart with their feet, and then, as they once more feathered their paddles again, they came crack down on their bottoms with a loud skelp on the seats, upon which they again mounted at the next stroke, and so on.

  When we cleared the harbour it was fine and serene, but about noon it came onto blow violently from the north-east. All this while we were coasting it along about pistol-shot from the white coral beach, with the clear light green swell on our right hand, and beyond it the dark and stormy waters of the blue rolling ocean; and the snow-white roaring surf on our left. By the time I speak of, the swell had been lashed up into breaking waves, and, after shipping more salt water than I had bargained for, we were obliged, about 4 P.M., to shove into a cove within the reef, called Naranja.

  Along this part of the coast there is a chain of salt-water lagoons, divided from the sea by the coral beach, the crest of which is covered here and there with clumps of stunted mangroves.

  This beach, strangely enough, is higher than the land immediately beh
ind it, as if it had been a dyke, or natural breakwater thrown up by the sea. Every here and there there were gaps in this natural dyke, and it was through one of these we shoved, and soon swung to our grapnel in perfect security, but in a most outlandish situation certainly.

  As we rode to the easterly breeze, there was the beach as described, almost level with the water, on our left hand, the land or lee side of it covered with most beautiful white sand and shells, with whole warrens of land-crabs running out and in their holes like little rabbits, their tiny green bodies seeming to roll up and down, for I was not near enough to see their feet, or the mode of their locomotion, like bushels of grapeshot trundling all about on the shining white shore. Beyond, the roaring surf was flashing up over the clumps of green bushes and thundering on the seaward face. On the right hand, ahead of us and astern of us, the prospect was shut in by impervious thickets of mangroves, while in the distance the blue hills rose glimmering and indistinct as seen through the steamy atmosphere. We were anchored in a stripe of clear water, about three hundred yards long by fifty broad. There was a clear space abeam of us, landward, of about half an acre in extent, on which was built a solitary Indian hut close to the water’s edge, with a small canoe drawn up close to the door. We had not been long at anchor when the canoe was launched, and a monkey-looking naked old man paddled off, and brought us a most beautiful chicken-turtle, some yams, and a few oranges. I asked him his price. He rejoined, “por amor de Dios;” that it was his mint’s day, and he meant it as a gift. However, he did not refuse a dollar when tendered to him before he paddled away.

  That night, when we were all at supper, master and men, I heard and felt a sharp crack against the side of the canoe. “Hillo, Peter, what is that?” said I.

  “Nothing, sir,” quoth Peter, who was enjoying his scraps abaft with the headman, patron, or whatever you may call him, of my crew. There was a blazing fire kindled on a bed of white sand, forward in the bow of the canoe, round which the four bogas, or canoemen, were seated, with three sticks stuck up triangularly over the fire, from which depended an earthen pot, in which they were cooking their suppers.