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Old Jack

by William Henry Giles Kingston · English · Gutenberg #23049 · 868,211 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Old Jack

Author: William Henry Giles Kingston


        
Release date: October 17, 2007 [eBook #23049]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23049

Credits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD JACK ***




Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




Old Jack, by W.H.G. Kingston.

________________________________________________________________________

This novel is written as a biography of a seaman, whose life at sea
starts as an illiterate boy-seaman, and whose career spans the last
twenty years of the eighteenth century and the first third of the
nineteenth.  We learn much of how ships were managed in those days, the
press-gangs, the training, and the life of the common sailor in the
fo'cstle.  We experience the life aboard a man-of-war, a merchantman, a
whaler, and even spend a few years ashore among the cannibals of the
Feejee islands.  There is a lot of meat in this book (not intended as a
pun), and the reader will finish it with his or her eyes filled with
wonderment.  We now give the preface which Kingston himself wrote for
the book.

Preface, by W.H.G. Kingston.

I had more than once, in my rambles in the neighbourhood of Blackheath,
Greenwich and Woolwich, met an old man walking briskly along, whose
appearance struck me as unusual; but we never even exchanged
salutations.  One day, however, when I was in company with my friend
Captain N--- of the Navy, seeing the stranger, he stopped and addressed
a few words to him, from which I gleaned that he had been a sailor.  My
friend told me, as we moved on, that he often had conversations on
religious subjects with the old man, who had for long been in a South
Sea whaler, and had seen many parts of the world. My interest was much
excited.  I took an early opportunity of making the acquaintance of Old
Jack--for such, he told me, was the name by which he was best known; and
without reluctance he gave me his history.  This I now present to the
public with certain emendations, with which I do not think my younger
readers will find fault.  W.H.G.K.

________________________________________________________________________

OLD JACK, BY W.H.G. KINGSTON.



CHAPTER ONE.

DONNYBROOK FAIR.

Jack began his story thus:

Of course you've heard of Donnybrook Fair, close to the city of Dublin.
What a strange scene it was, to be sure, of uproar and wild confusion--
of quarrelling and fighting from beginning to end--of broken heads, of
black eyes, and bruised shins--of shouting, of shrieking and swearing--
of blasphemy and drunkenness in all its forms of brutality.  Ay, and as
I've heard say, of many a deed of darkness, not omitting murder, and
other crimes not less foul and hateful to Him who made this beautiful
world, and gave to man a religion of love and purity.  There the
rollicking, roaring, bullying, fighting, harum-scarum Irishman of olden
days had full swing for all the propensities and vile passions which
have ruined him at home, and gained him a name and a fame not to be
envied throughout the world.  Often have I wondered whether, had a North
American Indian, or a South-Sea Islander, visited the place, he could
have been persuaded that he had come to a land of Christian men.
Certainly an angel from heaven would have looked upon the assemblage as
a multitude of Satan's imps let loose upon the world.  They tell me that
the fair and its bedevilments have pretty well been knocked on the head.
I am glad of it, though I have never again been to the spot from the
day of which I am about to speak.

I remember very little of my childish life.  Indeed, my memory is nearly
a blank up to the time to which I allude.  That time was one of the
first days of that same Donnybrook Fair; but I remember _that_ and good
reason I have so to do.  I was, however, but a small chap then, young in
years, and little as to size.

My father's name was Amos Williams.  He came from England and settled in
Dublin, where he married my mother, who was an Irishwoman.  Her name I
never heard.  If she had relations, they did not, at all events, own
her.  I suspect, from some remarks she once let drop which I did not
then understand, that they had discarded her because she had become a
Protestant when she married my father.  She was gentle and pious, and
did her utmost, during the short time she remained on earth, to teach me
the truths of that glorious gospel to which, in many a trial, she held
fast, as a ship to the sheet-anchor with a gale blowing on a lee-shore.
She died young, carried off by a malignant fever.  Her last prayers were
for my welfare here and hereafter.  Had I always remembered her precepts
I should, I believe, have been in a very different position to what I
now am in my old age.  My poor father took her death very much to heart.
For days after her funeral he sat on his chair in our little cottage
with his hands before him, scarcely lifting up his head from his breast,
forgetting entirely that he ought to go out and seek for work, as
without it he had no means of finding food for himself and me.  I should
have starved had not a kind woman, a neighbour, brought me in some
potatoes and buttermilk.  Little enough I suspect she had to spare after
feeding her own children.

At length my father roused himself to action.  Early one morning,
seizing his hat and bidding me stay quiet till his return, he rushed out
of the house.  He was a stonemason.  He got work, I believe, but the
tempter came in his way.  A fellow-workman induced him to enter a whisky
shop.  Spirits had, in his early days, been his bane.  My mother's
influence had kept him sober.  He now tried to forget his sorrow in
liquor.  "Surely I have a right to cure my grief as best I can," said
he.  Unhappily he did not wait for a reply from conscience.  Little food
could he buy from the remnant of his day's wages.  Thus he went on from
day to day, working hard when sober, drinking while he had money to pay
for liquor.

Still his affection for me did not diminish.  While in his right mind he
could not bear to have me out of his sight.  Every morning we might have
been seen leaving our cottage, I holding his hand as he went to his
work; yet nearly as certainly as the evening came round I had to creep
supperless to bed.  All day he would keep me playing about in his sight,
except when any of his fellow-workmen, or people living near where we
happened to be, wanted a lad to run on an errand.  Then I was always
glad of the job.  Whenever, by happy chance, he came home sober in an
evening, he would take me between his knees, and, parting my hair, look
into my face and weep till his heart seemed ready to burst.  But these
occasions grew less and less frequent.  What I have said will show that
I have reason to love the memory of both my parents, in spite of the
faults my unhappy father undoubtedly possessed.

Several months had thus passed away after my mother's death, when one
afternoon my father entered our cottage where he had left me since the
morning.

"Jack, my boy," said he, taking my hand, "come along, and I will show
you what _life is_."  Oh, had he said, "what _death is_," he would have
spoken the truth.

I accompanied him willingly, though I saw at a glance that he had
already been drinking.  Crowds of people were going in the direction we
took.  For some days past I had heard the neighbours talking of the
fair.  I now knew that we were bound there.  My mother had never allowed
me to go to the place, so I had no notion what it was like.  I expected
to see something very grand and very beautiful--I could not tell what.
I pushed on into the crowd with my father as eagerly as any one,
thinking that we should arrive at the fair at last.  I did not know that
we were already in the middle of it.  I remember, however, having a
confused sight of booths, and canvas theatres, and actors in fine
clothes strutting about and spouting and trumpeting and drumming; of
rope-dancers and tumblers with painted faces; and doctors in gilded
chariots selling all sorts of wonderful remedies for every possible
complaint; and the horsemanship, with men leaping through hoops and
striding over six steeds or more at full gallop; and the gingerbread
stalls, and toy shops, and similar wonders; but what was bought and sold
at the fair of use to any one I never heard.

My father had taken me round to several of the shows I have spoken of:
when he entered a drinking-booth, and set himself down with me on his
knee, among a number of men who seemed to be drinking hard.  Their
example stimulated him to drink harder than ever, and in a short time
his senses completely left him.  As, however, even though the worse
liquor, he was peaceable in his disposition, instead of sallying forth
as many did in search of adventures, he laid himself down on the ground
with his head against the canvas of the tent, and told me to call him
when it was morning.  Some one at the same time handed me a piece of
gingerbread, so I set myself down by his side to do as he bid me.

Those were the days of faction fights; and if people happened to have no
cause for a quarrel, they very soon found one.  The tent we were in was
patronised by Orangemen, and of course was a mark for the attacks of the
opposite party.  My poor father had slept an hour or so, with three or
four men near him in a similar condition, when a half-drunken body of
men came by, shillelah in hand, looking out for a row.  Unhappily the
shapes of the heads of most of the sleepers were clearly developed
through the canvas.  The temptation was not to be resisted--whack--
whack--whack!  Down came the heavy stick of a sturdy Irishman upon that
of my father.  "Get up out of that, and defend yourselves!" sung out
their assailants.  Most of his companions rushed out to avenge the
insult offered them, but my father made no answer.  Numbers joined from
all directions--shillelahs were flourished rapidly, and the scrimmage
became general.  I ran to the front of the tent and clapped my hands,
and shouted with sympathy.  Now the mass of fighting, shrieking men
swayed to one side, now to the other; now they advanced, now they
retreated, till by degrees the fight had reached a considerable distance
from the tent.

I then went back to my place by my father's side, wondering that he did
not get up to join the fray.  I listened, he breathed, but he did not
speak.  Still I thought he must be awake.  "Father, father," said I,
"get up, do.  It's time to go home, sure now."  I shook him gently, but
he made no reply.  At length I could hear no sound proceeding from his
lips.  I cried out in alarm.  The keeper of the booth saw that something
was wrong, and came and looked curiously into his face.  He lifted up my
father's hand.  It fell like lead by his side.

"Why won't father speak to me?"  I asked, dreading the answer.

"He'll never speak again!  Your father's dead, lad," answered the man in
a tone of commiseration.

With what oppressive heaviness did those words strike on my young heart,
though at that time I did not fully comprehend the extent of my loss,--
that I should never again hear the tone of his voice--that we were for
ever parted in this world--that I was an orphan, without a human being
to care for me.  But though bewildered and confused at that awful
moment, the words he had uttered as we left home rung strangely in my
ears--"Lad, I'll show you what life is."  Too truly did he show me what
death was.  Often and often have I since seen the same promise fulfilled
in a similar fearful way.  What men call _life_ is a certain road to
_death_; death of the body, death of the soul.  Of course I did not
understand this truth in those days; not indeed till long, long
afterwards, when I had gone through much pain and suffering, and had
been well-nigh worn-out.  I was then very ignorant and very simple, and
I should probably have been vicious also had not my mother watchfully
kept me out of the way of bad example; and even after she was taken from
me, I was prevented from associating with bad companions.

When I found that my poor father was really dead, I stood wringing my
hands and crying bitterly.  The sounds of my grief attracted many of the
passers-by; some stopped to inquire its cause, and when they had
satisfied their curiosity they went their way.  At last several seamen,
with an independent air, came rolling up near the tent.  The leader of
the party was one of the tallest men I ever saw.  Though he stooped
slightly as he walked, his head towered above all the rest of the crowd.

"What's the matter with the young squeaker there, mate?" he asked in a
bantering tone, thinking probably that I had broken a toy, or lost a
lump of gingerbread from my pocket.

"His daddy's dead, and he's no one to look after him!" shouted an urchin
from the crowd of bystanders.

"He's in a bad case then," replied the seaman, coming up to me.  "What,
lad! is it true that you have no friends?" he asked, stooping down and
taking me by the hand.

"No one but father, and he lies there!"  I answered, giving way to a
fresh burst of grief as I pointed to my parent's corpse.

"He speaks the truth," observed the man of the booth; "he has no mother,
nor kith nor kin that I know of, and must starve if no one takes charge
of him, I suspect."

The tall sailor looked at me with an expression of countenance which at
once gained my confidence.  "What say you, lad, will you come with us?"
he asked, pointing to his companions; "we'll take you to sea, and make a
man of you!"

"We may get him entered aboard the _Rainbow_, I think, mates," he added,
addressing them.  "He'll do as well as the monkey we lost overboard
during the last gale; and though he may be as mischievous now, he will
learn better manners, which Jocko hadn't the sense to do."

"Oh ay!  Bear him along with us," replied the other sea men; "he'll be
better afloat, whichever way the wind blows, than starving on shore."

"Come along, youngster, then," said the tall seaman; and, without
waiting for my reply, he seized me by the arm, and began to move off
with me through the crowd.

"But what will be done with poor father?  Sure I cannot leave him now!"
I exclaimed, looking back with anguish at my father's corpse.

"Oh, we'll see all about that," answered my new friend; "he shall be
waked in proper style, and have a decent funeral; so you may leave home
with a clear conscience.  Never fear!"

I need not dwell longer on the events of that sad day.  Aided by some of
the men who knew my father, and who returned to the tent after the fray
was over, the kind-hearted seamen bore the corpse to our cottage.  The
promise of a supply of whisky easily induced some of the neighbours to
come and howl during the livelong night.  This they did with right good
will, although my father was a Protestant and a foreigner; and I cried
and howled in sympathy.  I would fain, however, have forgotten my grief
in sleep.  The seamen had taken their departure, promising to return to
look after me.

As there was no chance of a man with a fractured skull coming to life
again, the funeral speedily took place.  The small quantity of furniture
remaining in the cottage was sold; but the proceeds were barely
sufficient to pay the expenses.

Thus I was left, with the exception of a suit of somewhat ragged clothes
on my back, as naked and poor as when I came into the world about twelve
years before, with a much more expensive appetite than I then had to
supply.  Some boys at that age are well able to take care of themselves,
but, as I have said, I was small for my years, and I had been kept by my
poor mother so much by myself, that I knew nothing of the world and its
ways.

Alter the funeral a compassionate neighbour, with a dozen or more
children of her own to feed, took me to her house till it was settled
what was to become of me.  She and her husband laughed at the idea of
the tall sailor coming to take me away.

"I know what sailors are," said the husband; "they'll just chuck a
handful of silver to the first beggar who asks them for it, and then
they'll go away and forget all about it!  Maybe your friend was only
after joking with you, and is off to sea long ago!"

"Oh no! he meant what he said," I replied; "I know that by the look of
his face.  He's a kind man, I'm certain!"

"It may be better for us all if he comes, but it's not very likely," was
the answer.  Still I trusted that my new friend would not deceive me.

I was standing in front of the cottage which was next to that my father
and I had inhabited, when my heart beat quick at seeing a tall figure
turn a corner at the other end of the street.  I was certain it was my
sailor friend.  "It's him!  It's him!  I knew he'd come!"  I shouted,
and ran forward to meet him.

He smiled as he saw my eagerness.  "You've not forgotten me, I see,
lad," said he; "well, come along.  It's all arranged; and if you're in
the same mind, you've only to say so, and we'll enter you aboard the
_Rainbow_!"

I told the tall sailor that I was ready to go wherever he liked to take
me.  This seemed to please him.  After I had wished the neighbours, who
had been so kind to me, good-bye, he took me by the hand, and led me
rapidly along in the direction of the docks.  Before reaching them, we
entered a house where some old gentlemen were sitting at a table.  One
of them asked me if I wished to go to sea and become an admiral.  I
replied, "Yes, surely," though I did not know what being an admiral
meant; and on this the other old gentlemen laughed, and the first wrote
something on a paper, which he handed across the table.

On this a sunburnt fine-looking man stepped forward and wrote on the
paper, and I was then told that I was bound apprentice to Captain
Helfrich, of the _Rainbow_ brig.  The fine-looking man was, I found,
Captain Helfrich.  "Well, that matter is squared now!" exclaimed the
tall sailor; "so, youngster, we'll aboard at once, before either you or
I get into mischief."

On our way to the brig, we stopped at a slop clothes-shop.  "Here, Mr
Levi!  I want an outfit for this youngster," said my friend, taking me
in.  "Let his duds be big enough, that he may have room to grow in them.
Good food and sea air will soon make him sprout like a young cabbage."

The order was literally fulfilled, and I speedily found myself the
possessor of a new suit of sailors' clothes, of two spare shirts, and
sundry other articles of dress.  My friend made me put them on at once.

"Now, do the old ones up in that handkerchief," said he; "we'll find a
use for them before long."

The spare new things he did up into a bundle, and carried it himself.

"I did not want the Jew to get your old clothes, for which he would have
allowed nothing," said he, as we left the shop.  "We shall soon fall in
with a little ragged fellow, to whom they'll be a rich prize."

As we went along, two or three boys begged of us, and pointed to their
rags as a plea for their begging.  "They'll not do," said he; "the
better clothes would ruin them."

At last, passing along the quays, we saw a little fellow sitting on the
stock of an anchor, and looking very miserable.  He had no shoes on his
feet; his trousers were almost legless, and fastened up over one
shoulder by a piece of string, while his arms were thrust into the
sleeves of an old coat, much too large for him, and patched and torn
again in all directions.  He did not beg, but just looked up into my
tall friend's face, as if he saw something pleasing there.

"What do you want?" said the sailor.

"Nothing," answered the boy, not understanding him.

"You're well off then, lad," said the tall sailor, smiling at him.  "But
I think that you would be the better for some few things in this world--
for a suit of clothes, for instance."

"The very things I do want!" exclaimed the lad.  "You've hit it, your
honour.  I'd a dacent suit as ever you'd wish to see, and they were run
away with, just as I'd got the office of an errand-boy with a gentleman,
and was in a fair way to make my fortune."

"Well, then, here's a suit for you, my lad," said the sailor; "just get
your mother to give them a darning up, and they'll serve your purpose, I
daresay.  Give him your bundle."

"Sure your honour isn't joking with me!" exclaimed the lad, his
countenance beaming with pleasure as he undid the bundle of clothes,
which were certainly very far better than those he had on.  "I'm a made
man--that I am!  Blessings on your honour, and the young master there!"

"You're welcome, lad, with all my heart," answered my friend.

"Oh, it's Terence McSwiney will have to thank you to the end of his
days, and ever after!" exclaimed the boy, as we were walking on.

"Well, Terence, I hope you'll get the post, and do your duty in it,"
said the tall sailor, moving off to avoid listening to the expressions
of gratitude which the lad poured forth.

The incident made a deep impression on me.  I learned by it that others
might be worse off than I was, and also that a gift at the right time
might be of the greatest service.  Of this I had the proof many years
afterwards.  If the rich and the well-to-do did but know of what use
their own or their children's cast-off clothes would be to many not only
among the labouring classes, but to people of education and refinement,
struggling with poverty, they would not carelessly throw them away, or
let them get into the hands of Jews, sold by their servants for a sixth
of their value.  I must observe that, in the course of my narrative I
shall often make remarks on various ideas which, at the time I speak of,
could not possibly have occurred to me.

The tall sailor and I walked along the quay.  All of a sudden it
occurred to me that I did not know his name.  I looked up in his face
and asked him.

"I'm called Peter Poplar," he answered, with one of his kind smiles.
"The name suits me, and I suit the name; so I do not quarrel with it.
You'll have to learn the names, pretty quickly too, of all the people on
board.  There are a good many of us, and each and every one of them will
consider himself your master, and you'll have to look out to please them
all."

"I'll do my best to please them, Mr Poplar," said I.

"That's right!  But I say, lad, don't address me so.  Call me plain
Peter, or Peter Poplar; we don't deal in misters aboard the _Rainbow_.
It is all very well for shore-going people to call each other mister; or
when you speak to an officer, just to show that he is an officer; but
sharp's the word with us forward--we haven't time for compliments."

"But I thought you were an officer, Peter," said I.  "You look like
one."

"Do I?" he answered, with his pleasant smile.  "Well, Jack, perhaps I
ought to have been one, and it's my own fault that I am not.  But the
truth is, I haven't got the learning necessary for it.  I never have
learned to read, and so I haven't been able to master navigation.
Without it, you know, a man cannot be an officer, however good a seaman
he may be; and in that point I'll yield to no man."

Peter, as he spoke, drew himself up to his full height, and I thought he
looked fit to be a very great officer indeed; even to be an admiral,
such as the old gentleman in the office had spoken of.

"I am very bad at my books too," said I.  "I can just read a little
though, and if I can get the chance of falling in with a book, I'll like
to read to you, Peter."

My friend thanked me, but said books were not often seen aboard the
_Rainbow_; nor were they found in many other merchant-craft, for that
matter, in those days.

We found the brig just ready to haul out into the outer basin,
preparatory to putting to sea.  She was a fine large craft, and had been
built for a privateer in the war-time.  Her heavy guns had been landed,
but she still carried some eight six-pounders; and as she had a strong
crew of fully twenty men, she was well able to defend herself from any
piratical craft, or other gentry of that description.

When Peter first took me on board, some of the seamen would scarcely
believe I was the same little boy they had seen at the fair, I looked so
much stouter and stronger in my seaman's dress.  I did not much like the
look of the forepeak, into which Peter introduced me, telling me that it
was to be my house and home for the next few years of my life.  I had
been accustomed to the dingy obscurity of an Irish cabin, but never had
I been, I thought, in a more dark and gloomy habitation than this.

"Never fear, Jack, you'll soon find yourself at home here," said Peter,
divining my thoughts.  While he was speaking, a seaman lighted a lantern
which hung from a beam, and its glare showed me that the place was more
roomy than I had supposed, and that every part of it was perfectly
clean.  I found, indeed, afterwards, that it was very superior to the
places merchant-seamen are compelled often to live in.  Some of the crew
slept in standing bed-places ranged round the sides of the vessel, or
rather inside her bows, while for others hammocks were slung from the
beams which supported the deck.  The chests were arranged to serve as
seats, while there was a rack for the plates and mugs belonging to their
mess.

The greater part of the crew was still on shore.  "Now, Jack, that you
know the sort of place we have to live in, I'll show you the
accommodation prepared for the captain and his passengers.  It must not
make you envious any more than it does me, for I think that those who
have learning and education should enjoy advantages in proportion.  I
feel that it is my own fault that I do not live in as fine a cabin as
the captain does."

Even though Peter had thus prepared me to see something very fine, the
richness of the cabin fittings and furniture surpassed anything I had in
my simplicity imagined to exist.  Perhaps those accustomed to such
things might not have thought it so very great.  I know that there were
damask curtains, and coverings to the sofas, and mirrors, and pictures
in gold frames, and mahogany tables and chairs, and cut-glass decanters,
and china in racks, and a number of pistols and muskets and cutlasses,
all burnished and shining, fixed against a bulkhead.

"Why, this is a place fit for a king," I exclaimed; "sure he can't have
anything grander."

Peter laughed.  "The captain prides himself on being very natty, and
having everything in good order," said he; "but kings, I fancy, live in
finer places than this.  However, my reason for bringing you here was to
show you the place, that you may know how to behave yourself should you
be sent for to attend on the captain.  You must obey him quickly, try
and understand his wishes, and keep things clean and in their places.
If you do this, you are certain to please him."

Thus it was that my friend kindly tried to prepare me for my new career.
"Now, Jack," said he at last, "I've done my best to set you on your
legs.  You must try to walk alone.  I don't want to make a nursing baby
of you, remember."  From that day forward Peter left me very much to
take care of myself.  Still I felt that his eye was watching over me,
and this feeling gave me a considerable amount of confidence which I
should not otherwise have possessed.

By the next day at noon, the rest of the crew had assembled; the captain
and several passengers, mostly merchants and planters, came on board.
There was a fair wind blowing down the Liffey.  "Open the dock-gates,
Mr Thompson, and let her go.  She'll find her own way to Jamaica and
back again by herself, without a hand at the helm, she knows it so
well," the captain, as he stood on the poop, sung out to the
dock-master.  I found that this was a standing joke of his.

The _Rainbow_ was a regular West India trader, and had had many
successful voyages there.  Captain Helfrich was chief owner as well as
master, and was a great favourite with the merchants and planters at the
different islands at which he was in the habit of touching, and
consequently had always plenty of passengers, and never had to wait long
for freight.  He was very proud of his brig, and of everything connected
with her.  He himself also was a person not a little worthy of note.  He
was, as I have said, a tall, fine man, robust and upright in figure,
with large, handsome features, and teeth of pearly whiteness.  He was
probably at this time rather more than forty years old, but not a
particle of his crisp, curly, brown hair had a silvery tint.  He had a
fine beaming smile, though he was very firm and determined, and could
look very fierce when angry.  I had an unbounded respect for him.  Thus
commanded, and with as good a crew as ever manned a ship, the _Rainbow_
dropped down the Liffey, and made sail to the southward; and under these
propitious circumstances I found myself fairly launched in my career as
a sailor.



CHAPTER TWO.

THE BITTERS AND SWEETS OF A SEA-LIFE.

"And so, Jack, you like a sea-life, do you?" said Peter Poplar to me one
day after we had been about two weeks from port.  We had had very fine
weather all the time, with a north or easterly wind, and I expected to
find the ocean always as smooth and pleasant as it then was.  One good
result was, that I had been able to pick up a good many of the details
of my duty, which I should not have done had I been sea-sick, and
knocked about in a gale.

"Yes, thanks to you, Peter, I like it much better than running errands
on shore," I answered.  "I don't wish for a pleasanter life."

Peter laughed.  "You've had only the sweets as yet, boy; the bitters are
to come," he observed.  "Still, if you get a fair share of the first,
you'll have no reason to complain."

I did not quite understand him.  I then only thought of the sweets, as
he called them.  The truth was, I had generally been very kindly treated
on board.  To be sure, I got a kick, or the taste of a rope's end, now
and then, from some of the men if they happened to be out of humour; but
those were trifles, as I never was much hurt, and Peter told me I was
fortunate to get nothing worse.  There was one ill-conditioned fellow,
Barney Bogle by name, who lost no opportunity of giving me a cuff for
the merest trifle, if he could do so without being seen by Peter, of
whom he was mortally afraid.  In his presence, the bully always kept his
hands off me.  Of course it would not have been wise in me to complain
of Barney to Peter, as it might have caused a quarrel; so I contented
myself with doing my best to keep out of my enemy's way, just as a cat
does out of the way of a dog which has taken a fancy to worry her.
Captain Helfrich had hitherto taken no notice whatever of me, and he
seemed to me so awful a person, that I never expected to be spoken to by
him.  Now and then the mates ordered me to do some little job or other,
to fetch a swab or a marlinespike, or to hold a paint-pot, but they in
no other way noticed me.

I remember how blue the sky was, and how sparkling the sea, and how hot
the sun at noon shone down on our heads, and how brightly the moon
floated above us at night, and formed a long, long stream of silvery
light across the waters; and I used to fancy, as I stood looking at it,
that I could hear voices calling to me from far, far-off, and telling me
of my sweet, calm-eyed mother, still remembered fondly, and of my poor
father, snatched from me so suddenly.  I won't talk much about that sort
of thing.  It seems now like a long-forgotten dream--I believe that,
even then, I was dreaming.

Well, as I said, the fine weather continued for a long time, till I was
awoken one morning by a loud, roaring, dashing, creaking sound, or
rather, I might say, of a mixture of such sounds; and as I began to rub
my eyes, I thought that I should have been hove out of the narrow crib
in which I was stowed away in the very bows of the vessel.  Sometimes I
felt the head of the brig lifted up, and then down it came like a
sledge-hammer into the water; now I felt myself rolled on one side, now
on the other.  I fully thought that the vessel must be on the rocks.
Not a gleam of light reached me, nor could I hear the sound of a human
voice.  I wanted to be out of the place; but when I tried to get up, I
felt so sick and wretched, that I lay down again with an idea that it
would be more comfortable to die where I was.  At last, however, Barney
Bogle came below and discovered me.

"Turn out, you young skulker; turn out!" he exclaimed, belabouring me
with a rope's end.  "Didn't you hear all hands called to shorten sail an
hour ago?"

I had no help for it, so on deck I crawled, where the grey light of
morning was streaming from beneath a dark mass of clouds which hung
overhead, and a gale was blowing which sent the foam flying from the
tops of the seas, deluging us fore and aft.  Now the brig was lifted up
to the summit of a wave, and now down she sank into the trough of the
sea, with a liquid wall on one side which, as it came curling on, looked
as if it must inevitably overwhelm her.  She was under close-reefed
topsails and storm-jib, and two of the best hands were at the helm.
Peter was one of them.  I managed to climb up to windward, and to hold
on by the weather-fore-rigging, where the rest of the crew were
collected.

I shall never forget the dark, dreary, and terrific scene which the
ocean presented to my unaccustomed sight.  At first, too, I felt very
sick and miserable, and I thought that I would far rather have been
starving on shore than going to be drowned, as I fancied, and being
tossed about by the rough ocean.  Barney, who was on deck before me,
abused me as I crawled up near him, and contrived to give me a kick,
which, had I let go my hold, as it was calculated to make me do, would
probably have been the cause of my immediate destruction.  At that
moment a huge sea came rolling up towards the brig, topping high above
our deck.  I saw Peter Poplar and the other man at the helm looking out
anxiously at it.  They grasped tighter hold of the spokes of the wheel,
and planted their feet firmer on the deck.  Captain Helfrich and his
mates were standing by the main-rigging.

"Hold on, hold on for your lives, my men!" he sung out.  The crew did
not neglect to obey him, and I clung to a rope like a monkey.  Most of
the passengers were below, sick in their berths.  Down came the huge sea
upon us like the wall of a city overwhelming its inhabitants.  Over our
deck it rushed with terrific force.  I thought to a certainty that we
were sinking.  What a horrible noise there was!--wrenching and tearing,
and the roar and dashing sound of the waves, and the howling of the
wind!  All contributed to confuse my senses, so that I forgot altogether
where I was.  I had an idea, I believe, that the end of the world was
come.  Still my shipmates did not shriek out, and I was very much
surprised to find the brig rise again out of the water, and to see them
standing where they were before, employed in shaking the wet off their
jackets.  The deck of the brig, however, presented a scene of no little
confusion and havoc.  Part of her weather-bulwarks forward had been
stove in, the long-boat on the booms had been almost knocked to pieces,
and a considerable portion of the after-part of the lee-bulwarks had
been washed away, showing the course the sea had taken over us.

"We must not allow that trick to be played us again," said the captain
to the mates.  I had crept as far aft as I dared go, for I did not like
the look of the sea through the broken bulwark, so I could hear him.
"Stand by to heave the ship to!" he shouted, and his voice was easily
heard above the sounds of the tempest.  "Down with the helm!--In with
the jib!--Hand the maintopsail!"  The officers and men, who were at
their stations, flew to obey their orders.  I trembled as I saw the
third mate, with several other men, taking in the jib.  Having let go
the halliards, and eased off the sheets, hauling away on the
down-hauler; and having got it down on the bowsprit-cap, though nearly
blown out of the bolt-ropes, stowing it away in the foretopmast
staysail-netting.  As the bows of the brig now rose and now plunged into
the trough of the sea, I thought they must have been, to a certainty,
washed away.  The maintopsail was, in the meantime, taken in, and I felt
that I was very glad I was not obliged to lay-out on the yard with the
other men.  It seemed a wonder how they were not shaken off into the
sea, or carried away by the bulging sail.  The great thing in taking in
a sail in a gale, as I now learned from Peter, is not to allow the sail
to shake, or it is very likely to split to pieces.  Keep it steadily
full, and it will bear a great strain.  Accordingly, the clew-lines,
down-haul-tackle, and weather-brace being manned, the halliards were let
go, the weather-brace hauled in, the weather-sheet started and clewed
up; then the bowline and lee-sheets being let go, the sail caught aback,
and the men springing on the yard, grasped it in their arms as they hung
over it.  Folding it in inch by inch, they at length mastered the
seeming resistless monster, and passing the gaskets round it, secured it
to the yard.  Those who for the first time see a topsail furled in a
heavy gale may well deem it a terrific operation, and perilous in the
extreme to those employed in it.  I know that I breathed more freely
when all the men came down safely from the yard, Barney Bogle among the
number; and the helm being lashed a-lee, the brig rode like a duck over
the seas.

There was no time, however, to be idle, and all hands set to work to
repair damages.  I now saw that the captain, who appeared so fine a
gentleman in harbour, or when there was nothing to do, could work as
well, if not rather better, than any one.  With his coat off, and saw,
axe, or hammer in hand, he worked away with the carpenter in fitting a
new rail, and planking up the bulwarks; and the steward had twice to
call him to breakfast before he obeyed the summons.  His example
inspired the rest; and in a very short time the bulwarks were made
sufficiently secure to serve till the return of fine weather.

"I told you, Jack, that you would have a taste of the bitters of a
sea-life before long," said Peter, as soon as he had time to have a word
with me.  "Let me tell you, however, that this is just nothing, and that
we shall be very fortunate if we do not fall in with something much
worse before long."

I knew that Peter would not unnecessarily alarm me, and so I looked up
at the dark clouds driving across the sky, and saw the hissing, foaming
waves dancing up wildly around us, looking as if every moment they were
ready to swallow up the brig, I asked myself what worse could occur,
without our going to the bottom.  I had never then been in a regular
hurricane or a typhoon, or on a lee-shore on a dark night, surrounded by
rocks, or among rapid currents, hurrying the ship within their power to
destruction; nor had I been on board a craft when all hands at the pumps
could scarcely keep her afloat; nor had I seen a fire raging.  Indeed, I
happily knew nothing of the numberless dangers and hardships to which a
seaman in his career is exposed.  I must not say that I was in any way
frightened.  I resolved to keep a bold heart in my body.  "Never mind,"
I answered to Peter's remark; "while I've got you and the captain on
board, I don't fear anything."

Peter laughed.  "We may be very well in our way," said he; "but, Jack,
my advice is: Trust in God, and hold on by the weather-rigging.  Should
the ship go down, look out for spar or a plank if there's no boat
afloat; and if you can find nothing, swim as long as you can; but
whatever you do, trust in God."

I have never forgotten Peter's advice.  Never have I found that trust
deceive me; and often and often have I been mercifully preserved when I
had every reason to believe that my last hour had come.  I should remark
also that, badly off as I have often fancied myself, I have soon had
reason to be thankful that I was not in the condition of others around
me.

While Peter was speaking, one of the crew sung out, "a sail on the
weather-bow!"  Sure enough, as we rose on the summit of a sea, a ship
could be seen with all her topsails set running before the wind.  Peter
remarked that she was standing directly for us.  "She is a large ship,
by the squareness of her yards; probably either from the West Indies or
South America, or maybe China, or from some port in the Pacific, and she
has come round the Horn."

We watched her for some time.  "She has a signal of distress flying,
sir," said the first mate, who had been looking at her through a glass.

"She is in a bad way, then," remarked the captain.  "I fear that unless
the sea goes down, and she in the meantime can heave-to near us, we can
render her no assistance."

On came the ship right for us.  I thought that she would run us down;
so, indeed, I found did others on board.  The mates, indeed, went to the
wheel to put the helm up to let the brig fall off, that we might get out
of her way; but as she approached, she altered her course a little, so
that she might pass clear under our stem.  Never shall I forget the look
of that strange ship; for, as she came near us, rolling in the trough of
the sea, we could see clearly everything going forward on her decks.

She was a Spaniard, so Peter told me, as he knew from the ensign which
flew out, hoisted half-way to her peak.  She was a high-pooped ship,
with a deep waist and a lofty forecastle, her upper works narrowing as
they rose, with large lanterns, and much rich carved work all gilt and
painted.  Such a craft is never seen now-a-days.

She was crowded with people.  Some were soldiers, worn-out men, with
their wives and families returning home from the colonies; others were
cabin passengers.  There were rich Hidalgos, attended on by their
slaves--old men, who had spent their lives abroad in the pursuit of
wealth; and there were fair girls, too, probably their daughters, some
young and lovely; and there were young men, with life before them, and
thinking that life was to be very sweet; and there were children, and
infants in arms, and their fond mothers or nurses anxious to shelter
them from harm.  Then there were the officers of the ship and the crew;
fierce, dark-bearded men--a mongrel set of various ranks and many
nations.  She was evidently a rich galleon, returning to old Spain from
one of her ill-governed dependencies in South America.  But it was the
way in which all these people were employed that made so deep an
impression on me.  Then the scene looked only like a strange picture.
It was not till long afterwards, when I reasoned on what I had observed,
that I understood what I now describe.

The greater number of the men were at the pumps, labouring in a way
which showed that they fancied their lives depended on their exertions;
but the clear streams of water which came out of the scuppers, and the
heavy way in which the ship plunged into the trough of the sea, showed
that their labour would too probably be in vain.  Others seemed
paralysed or pitied, and sat down with their heads on their breasts
waiting their fate.  Many, as they passed us, came to the side of their
ship, and held out their hands imploringly towards us, as if we could
help them.  But what seemed most dreadful--some of the sailors and
soldiers had got hold of a quantity of wine and spirits, and were
reeling about the decks, offering liquor to every one they encountered,
and holding out bottles and cans of wine mockingly at us, or as if
inviting us to join them.  Several, although they must have given up all
hope of assistance from man, might have looked for it from Heaven, for
they were on their knees imploring help--was it from Him who alone can
give it, or was it from their various saints?  I don't know.

Two groups of figures on the poop especially struck me.  In the centre
of one stood a tall man in rich vestments of gold, and white, and
purple.  He had a shorn crown.  He was a priest.  He was holding aloft a
golden crucifix, which I thought the wind would have blown out of his
hand, but he must have been a powerful man, and he grasped it fast.
Assisting to support him and it were two monks in dark dresses, kneeling
on the deck on either side of him.  Around them knelt and clung, holding
on to each other, a number of men and women, and among them were some
little children, holding up their tiny hands in supplication towards the
crucifix.  Of course, no sound could reach us, but there seemed to be
much wailing, and crying, and groaning.  Some were stretching out their
arms, others were beating their breasts and tearing their hair.  The
priest stood unmoved, with head erect, uttering prayers, or pronouncing
absolution.  At some distance from them were a couple, not to be
overlooked either.  One was a fine handsome young man, in the uniform of
a military officer; the other a young and beautiful girl, who lay nearly
fainting in his arms.  He looked towards us eagerly, hopefully, as if he
fancied that he would plunge with his precious charge into the water.  I
thought that at that moment he was going to make the daring leap.  Some
of the officers of the ship were gathered round the wheel.  Just then
the helm was put down, and we saw some of them with blows and threats
urging the drunken crew to take in the headsails, leaving the
maintopsail only to steady the ship.  In the operation, however,
carelessly performed, the sails were blown to ribbons, and the ship
drifted away to leeward of us.  She had before this evidently suffered
severely.  Her boats were gone; her bulwarks in many places stove in;
and her bowsprit and foretopmast had been carried away, while, of
course, still more serious damage had been sustained in her hull.

"Shall we be able to do anything for all those poor people?"  I asked of
Peter, who stood near me.

"No, Jack, we shall not," he answered; "man can't help them.  This ship,
by the look of her, will not keep above water another half-hour; and
then Heaven have mercy on their souls!  I doubt if the captain will
venture to lower a boat in this sea to attempt to save them, or if a
boat could lift if he did."

"It's very dreadful," said I.

"Yes, Jack; but it's the lot all sailors must be prepared for," answered
Peter.  "Remember, it may be my fate or yours one of these days.  We
should not be afraid; but I repeat it, Jack, we should be prepared."  I
did not quite understand Peter then.

"Then, Peter, you would not go in the boat if one was lowered?"  I
observed.

"Wait till the captain says what he wants done," he answered calmly.
"If he thinks a boat can live, and wants volunteers, it's my duty to go,
you know.  Remember, Jack, obey first, and calculate risk afterwards."

Peter's predictions as to the fate of the Spanish ship were fulfilled
sooner even than he had expected.  That moment, while we were looking at
her, she settled lower and lower in the water; she rolled still more
heavily; her bow looked as if about to rise, but instead her stem lifted
high--up it went.  There seemed a chasm yawning for her.  Into it she
plunged, and down, down she went--the waves wildly rushing over her
decks, and scattering the shrieking multitude assembled on them far and
wide over the foaming ocean; mothers, children, husbands, wives, lovers,
and friends, the priests and their disciples, were rudely torn asunder,
and sent hither and thither.  Numbers went down in the vortex of the
huge ship--the men at the pumps, the drunken seamen, some who had clung
madly to the rigging.  Others supported themselves on anything which
could float; and brave swimmers struck out for dear life.

"I can't stand this," cried our captain, unconscious that he was
speaking aloud; "we must try at all risks to save the poor wretches."

"I'll go," cried the second mate, Harry Gale, a fine, quiet,
gentleman-reared young man as ever I met.

"I'm one with you, Mr Gale," cried Peter Poplar, springing aft to the
falls of the lee-quarter-boat, the only one which could be lowered.
"Bear a hand here, mates; there'll no time to be lost!"

"Hold fast!" shouted the captain.  "No hurry, my men; those who go clear
the boat.  The mates will stand by the falls with Jackson and Farr.  All
ready now!--Lower away!"

The captain gave the word, so that the boat touched the water just at
the best time.  Peter Poplar stood in the bows, boat-hook in hand, and
moved off; Mr Gale steered; the three other men were the strongest of
the ship's company; and truly it required all the care and seamanship
mortal man could possess to keep a boat alive in such a boiling caldron
as the wide Atlantic then was.  I was very anxious for Peter's safety,
for he was indeed my friend.  I feared also for the rest.  I was fully
alive to the danger of the expedition they were on.

The boat, keeping under the lee of the brig, dropped down towards the
scene of the catastrophe.  So fiercely boiling, however, were the waves,
that with awful rapidity the greater number of those who had lately
peopled the deck of that big ship were now engulfed beneath them.  Some,
however, still struggled for existence.

Had the sea been less violent many might have been saved; for as we
stood on the deck we could see the poor wretches struggling among the
foam, but by the time the boat reached the spot they had sunk for ever.

The captain had gone into the main-rigging, and with his outstretched
arm was indicating to the second mate the direction in which to steer;
but of course she could venture to go very little out of one particular
direction without a certainty of being swamped.  It was very dreadful to
watch one human being after another engulfed in the hungry ocean.  We
have just to picture to ourselves how we should be feeling if we were in
their places, to make us eager to save those under like circumstances.

The most conspicuous object was the tall priest, and towards him the
boat was accordingly making her way.  Two other figures were at the same
time seen.  One floated only a short distance to leeward of the brig; it
was that, I felt certain, of the beautiful girl I had seen supported by
the young officer.  She was unconscious of all around, and I believe
that even then life had left her frame.  She was supported by a piece of
plank, to which probably she had been secured with the last fond effort
of affection by him who had thus been unable to provide any means of
escape for himself.  He, however, must have struggled bravely for
existence, for I made him out at a short distance beyond, now rising on
the crest of a wave, now sinking into the trough of the sea, but still
swimming on with his eye gazing steadily in the direction of that
floating form.

Meantime the boat was making towards the priest.  "Give way, lads!"
shouted several of our people in their eagerness, forgetting that they
could not possibly be heard.  No time was to be lost, for already the
priest's rich dress was saturated with water, and he was sinking lower
and lower, and what at first had supported him was now dragging him
down.  Still he did not give in, but, cross in hand, waved the boat on.
The distance he was from the boat must have been greater than we
supposed.  Suddenly he threw up his arms, and a white-crested top of a
sea breaking over him, he disappeared for ever amidst a mass of foam.

Mr Gale saw what had occurred, and instantly turned the boat's head
towards the young officer, who was still swimming on with wonderful
strength.  In this instance the men were more successful; the boat's
head dropped down close to him, and Peter, stretching out his arm,
grasped the young man by the shoulder, and hauled him in over the bows,
and passed him on into the stern-sheets.  Though faint at first, the
Spaniard instantly recovered himself, and stood upright in the boat,
gazing eagerly around.  As the boat rose on a sea, he caught sight of
the object of his search.  He pointed towards the floating form of the
young lady.  Even when first seen, the line by which she had been
hurriedly and imperfectly secured to the plank I observed was loosened.
The wash of the sea now parted her from it entirely.  The young man saw
what had occurred.  With a cry of anguish, before our people could seize
him, he sprang from the gunwale towards the object of his love, as her
dress carried her down beneath the foaming waters.  I think he reached
her.  They disappeared at the same moment, and never rose again!

Still a few people kept above water, holding on to planks, or swimming,
chiefly seamen or soldiers; but most of them had been carried to too
great a distance from the brig for a boat to save them.  It was only by
keeping under our lee, our hull preventing the sea from breaking so
much, that the boat avoided being swamped.  Thus we could expect that
only a very few of those who floated to the last could be saved.  No one
could have ventured further than did our brave mate and his crew;--they
would in all probability have thrown away their own lives had not
Captain Helfrich recalled them.  He signalled with his hand, but Mr
Gale did not observe him.  "Fire a gun there," he shouted; "quick, for
your lives!"  A gun had been ready loaded for the purpose.  Its report
served as the funeral knell of many a despairing wretch.

The boat put about.  The returning alongside was as perilous an
operation almost as the lowering the boat had been.  All hands not
required at the falls stood ready with ropes to heave to our shipmates
should she be swamped alongside; but the oars being thrown in, Mr Gale
and Peter seizing the fall-tackles at the right moment, hooked on, and
the rest of the people handing themselves up by the ropes hanging ready
for them, the boat was hoisted up before the sea again rose under her
bottom.  It was sad to think: that all their gallant efforts had been
unavailing.  In two or three minutes more not a human being of all the
Spaniard's crew was to be seen alive; and except a few planks and spars,
and here and there a bale or a chest, mere dots in the ocean, we might
have fancied, as we looked out on those foaming waters, that all that
had passed was some hideous dream.  Often, indeed, have I since had the
same dreadful drama acted over before my eyes while I slept; so deep was
the impression made on me by the reality.  Very many things which long
after that time occurred have entirely faded from my memory.

Had it been possible, (as Peter told me he thought it would have been,
had all the crew done their duty), to keep the galleon afloat a few
hours longer, in all probability we should have been the means of saving
the people.  In the course of the day the wind fell, and the sea went
down sufficiently to have allowed our boats to have passed between the
two vessels without any great risk.  Captain Helfrich was certainly not
a man to have deserted her while a chance remained of saving a human
being.  While she floated he would have stuck to her.  "Remember, Jack,"
said Peter, "the first duty of a ship's company is to stick by each
other--to keep sober, and to obey their officers.  Without a head, men
can do nothing.  They are like a flock of sheep running here and there,
and never getting on.  What is a man's duty is best; and you see here,
for instance, that the lives of all depend on their doing their duty."

Sail was again made on the brig, and she was able to lay her course.  At
night, however, it came on to blow again, and by next morning we were
once more hove-to with more sea, and the wind chopping about and making
it break in a far more dangerous way than it had done on the previous
day.  I found, when I came on deck after my watch below, all hands
looking out at an object which had just been discovered a little abaft
the lee-bow.  Some said it was a dead whale; one or two declared that it
was a rock; but the officers, after examining it with their glasses,
pronounced it to be a vessel bottom uppermost!  The question was,
whether the wreck was deserted, or whether any people still clung to it.
Hove-to as we were, we made of course considerable lee-way; and keeping
in the direction we were then driving, we should before long get near
enough to examine her condition.  Had not the brig already received some
damage, Captain Helfrich would, I believe, have run down at once to the
wreck; but this, a right care for the safety of his own vessel would not
allow him to do.  Every instant, too, the gale was increasing, till it
blew a perfect hurricane; and not for a moment could a boat have lived
had one been lowered.  The wreck drove before the wind, but of course we
moved much faster; it was some hours, however, before we got near enough
to the wreck to discover if anyone was upon it.

"There are three or four people at least upon it," exclaimed Mr Gale.
"Poor fellows! can we do nothing for them, sir?"

"I cannot allow you to throw away your life, as you would if you had
your own way," answered the captain, to whom he spoke.  "All we can do
is to hope that the wind will go down before we drift out of sight of
each other."

Unhappily our course took us some way from the wreck, though near enough
to see clearly the poor fellows on it.  How intense must have been their
feelings of anxiety as they saw us approaching them! and how bitter
their disappointment when they discovered how impossible it was for us
to render them any assistance till the weather moderated!

The wreck appeared to be that of a schooner, or brig of a hundred and
fifty tons or so.  The people were holding on to her keel.  There were
three white men and two blacks.  They waved their handkerchiefs and
caps, and held out their hands imploringly towards us.  Some were
sitting astride on the keel; one was lying down, held on by his
shipmates; and another lay right over it looking almost dead.  We made
out this through the glasses.  Peter got me a look through a telescope
which one of the men had.  It brought the countenances of the poor
fellows fearfully near--their expressions of horror and despair could be
seen.  We longed more than ever for the gale to abate that we might help
them.  Still it blew on as fiercely as ever all day.  The wreck remained
during this time in sight, but of course we were increasing our distance
from her.

"What would have happened," said I to Peter, "if it had been night
instead of day; and if, instead of passing by the wreck, we had struck
against her?"

"Why, we should have given her a finishing-stroke, and very likely have
stove in our bottom and followed her," he answered.  "I like to hear you
ask such questions; they show that you think.  The event you have spoken
of occurs very frequently, I suspect.  Numbers of vessels leave port,
and are never again heard of.  They are either run down, or they run
their bows against a wreck, or the butt-end of a tree or log of timber;
some are burned; some run against icebergs, or fields of ice; and some
are ill put together, or rotten, and spring leaks, and so go down: but
to my mind the greater number are lost from the first cause I have
spoken of.  You'll find out in time, Jack, all the perils to which a
seaman is exposed, as well as the hardships I once before spoke to you
about."  I did not think at the time how true Peter's words would come.

We were nearly a mile from the wreck, I suppose, when night came on; but
the captain took her bearings by the compass, that he might know in what
direction to look for her should he be able to make sail before the
morning.  I had got pretty well accustomed to the tumbling about by this
time, but I could scarcely sleep for thinking of the poor fellows on the
wreck.  The night passed away without any change in the weather.  When
morning came all hands were looking out for the wreck; but we all looked
in vain.  There was the leaden sky, the dark-green foaming sea, but not
a spot on it to be observed far as the eye could reach.  Before noon the
wind once more moderated, and making all sail we stood over the place
where, by our captain's calculations, the wreck would be found.  Not a
sign of her was to be seen.  It was too certain that she must have gone
down during the night.

Every day seemed to have its event.  We were again on our proper course,
though the sea was still running high, when towards evening an object
was seen floating ahead of us, just on the lee-bow.  We were at no great
distance, little more than half a mile or so, when first seen, so that
we were not left long in doubt as to what it was.  "A raft!" said one;
"A piece of a wreck," said another; "Some casks," said a third.

"Whatever it is, there is a man upon it," exclaimed Peter; "and,
messmates, he's alive!  Steady you," he added, looking at the man at the
wheel.  "Keep her away a little," he said, addressing Mr Gale, who had
charge of the deck.

The news of what was seen at once spread below, and all hands were soon
on deck on the look-out.  The man was alive, and saw us coming, for he
waved a handkerchief to attract our notice, lest he might not have been
observed.  We waved to him in return, to keep up his spirits.  As we
approached, we saw that the man was dressed as a sailor.  He was seated
on a grating, made more buoyant by several pieces of spars and planks.
He was leaning against another plank, which he had secured in an upright
position by means of stays on the grating.  Had not the sea been still
very high, we could have run alongside his raft and picked him off
without difficulty; but as it was impossible to steer with the necessary
nicety, there was a risk of running him down by so doing.  We therefore
hove-to to windward of him; and Mr Gale, with the boat's crew who had
before volunteered, being lowered, they pulled carefully towards him.
The man stood up as he saw them approach; and scarcely had the bow of
the boat touched the grating, than he sprung on board, and without help
stepped over the shoulders of the men into the stern-sheets.  When
there, however, his strength seemed to give way, and he sank down into
the bottom of the boat in what appeared to be a fainting fit.  A few
drops from a flask, which Mr Gale had thoughtfully carried in his
pocket, partially revived the man, though he was unable to help himself
up the side.  He was therefore slung on deck, and the boat being hoisted
in without damage, we again made sail.

The man, who was placed on deck with his back against the
companion-hatch, remained some time in an almost unconscious state; but
at length, after much care had been bestowed on him, he recovered
sufficiently to speak.  He was a fine, good-looking young man; and his
well-browned countenance and hands showed that he had been long in a
tropical climate.  A little food, taken slowly, still further revived
him; and he was soon able to lift himself up and look about him.

"How was it you came to be where we found you?" asked Captain Helfrich,
who was seated near him on the companion-hatch, while I was employed in
polishing up the brass rail of the companion-ladder.

"Why, I belonged to a ship, the _Oak Tree_, bound from Honduras to
Bristol with mahogany and logwood," answered the stranger.  "We had made
a fair run of it, three days ago, when we were caught in a heavy squall,
which carried away our maintop-mast, and did us much damage.
Fortunately, I was at supper when all hands were called to shorten sail;
and not thinking what I was about, I clapped a whole handful of biscuit
and junk into my pocket before I sprang on deck.  A few hours after
dark, a heavy sea struck the ship, and carried away our boats and
bulwarks, washing me with one or two other poor fellows overboard.  I
was without my shoes, and had only a thin cotton jacket on; so, being a
good swimmer, I was able to regain the surface, and to look about me.
Away flew the ship before the wind, without a prospect of my being able
to regain her; so I did not trouble myself upon that point.  The other
men who had been washed overboard with me had sunk: I could do them no
good.  I therefore had only to look after myself.  I first cast my eyes
about me, to see what I could get hold of to keep me afloat.  The wreck
of the bulwarks and boats, with the spars which had been washed
overboard, had sent me some materials; and I got a couple of pieces
under my arms to support me while I looked for more.  In the heavy sea
that was running, I could not have made much of a raft, when fortunately
my eye caught a grating; which I managed, after much exertion, to reach.
By degrees I fished up other pieces of plank and broken spars, till I
had formed the raft you found me on.  Fortunately, I had started on my
cruise just after supper, so that I was able to hold out for some time
without eating.  But when morning came, and there was not a sail in
sight, I began to feel somewhat down-hearted.  However, I soon plucked
up again.  Said I to myself, `Though the ocean is wide, there are a good
many craft afloat, and it will be hard if someone doesn't make me out
before very long.'  I tried to think of all the wonderful escapes people
had made who had been in a similar condition; and I prayed that God
would deliver me in the same way.  One thing weighed on my mind, and
still weighs there: I left a wife and a small child at home, near
Bristol; and when the ship arrives there, the poor girl will hear that I
was was washed overboard, and will believe me dead.  When you got near
me, I saw that you were outward-bound; and the thought that she might
have to go many a month and not hear of me, served more than anything
else to upset me.  My strength gave way, and I went off in a faint, as
you saw, in the bottom of the boat."  He then told the captain that his
name was Walter Stenning.  The captain, who was a kind-hearted man, did
his best to raise his spirits; and promised him that if we fell in with
a homeward-bound ship he would endeavour to put him on board.

As it happened, we did not speak any vessel till we reached the West
Indies; so we had to carry Walter Stenning with us.



CHAPTER THREE.

THE WEST INDIES.

"Land! land on the starboard-bow!" was shouted from the foretopmast
cross-trees, where several of our men had been, in spite of a pretty hot
scorching sun, since dawn, on the look-out for it.

"Who saw it first?" asked the captain, who was always more anxious when
nearing the coast than at any other time.

"Tom Tillson," was the answer from aloft.

"A glass of grog for you, Tom, if it proves to be the land, and you have
kept your eyes open to good purpose!" said the captain, preparing
himself to go to the mast-head, where the mates followed him.

They were satisfied that Tom had fairly won his glass of grog, I
suppose; for, after some time, when I went aloft, I saw a high
blue-pointed mountain rising out of the sparkling sea with ranges of
lower hills beneath it.

As we drew in with the shore, we could distinguish the fields of
sugar-cane surrounded by lime-trees, and the white houses of the
planters, and the huts of the negroes; and I thought that I should very
much like to take a run among the lofty palmetto and the wild
cotton-trees and the fig-trees, and to chase the frolicsome monkeys I
had heard spoken of among their branches.  A light silvery mist hung
over the whole scene, and made it look doubly beautiful.  I asked Peter
what land it was, for I thought that we had arrived at America itself.
He laughed, and said that it was only a little island called Saint
Christopher's; and that he'd heard say that it was first discovered by
the great admiral who had found out America, and that he had called it
after his own name.  Peter, though he could not read, had a great store
of information, which he had picked up from various people.  He was not
always quite correct; and that was from not being able to read, as he
was less able to judge of the truth of what people told him; but
altogether, I learned a great deal from his conversation.

We came to an anchor before the town of Basseterre, the capital of the
island.  It was a clean handsome-looking place, and a number of ships
lay before it; while behind it, rising from the wide valley, richly
cultivated and beautiful in the extreme, rose the lofty and precipitous
crags of Mount Misery, 3700 feet high.  It may well be so-called, for it
would be pain and misery to have to climb up it, and still greater not
to be able to come down again!

After the events I have before described, we had come south till we fell
in with the trade-winds, which had brought us on a due westerly course
to this place.  I did not go on shore; but I heard the captain say that
the merchants and planters were very civil and polite to him.  They had,
however, suffered very much in the late war with France.  It was in the
year 1782 that a French general, the Marquis de Bouille, having eight
thousand men with him, besides a fleet of twenty-nine sail of the line,
commanded by the Admiral Count de Grasse, captured the island from the
English.  It was, however, restored to Great Britain when the war ended
the following year.

We had a quantity of fruit brought off to us, which did most of us a
great deal of good, after living so long on salt provisions.  I remember
how delicious I thought the shaddock--which is a fruit something like a
very large orange.  Its outer coat is pale, like a lemon, but very
thick.  It is divided into quarters by a thin skin, like an orange; and
the taste--which is very refreshing--is between a sweet and an acid.
The colour of the inside of some is a pale red--these are the best;
others are white inside.  Peter told me that he had heard that the tree
was brought from the coast of Guinea by a Captain Shaddock, and that the
fruit has ever since borne his name.

We spent three or four days at anchor before this beautiful place; and
then, having landed two or three of our passengers, and put Walter
Stenning on board a vessel returning to England, once more made sail for
our destination.  The trade-wind still favoured us, though it was much
lighter than it had been before we entered the Caribbean Sea.

"Jack," said Peter to me the afternoon we left Basseterre, "I've good
news for you.  The captain wants a lad in the place of Sam Dermot, whom
he has left on board a homeward-bound ship, for he found that he was not
fit for a sea-life, and Mr Gale has been speaking a word in your
favour.  I don't say it's likely to prove as pleasant a life as you lead
forward, but if you do your duty and please him, the captain has the
power to advance your interests--and I think he is the man to do it."

This was good news, I thought; and soon afterwards Mr Gale told me to
go into the cabin.  The captain, who was looking over some papers,
scarcely raised his head as I entered.  "Oh, Jack Williams--is that your
name, boy?" said he.  "You are to help Roach, the steward.  Go to him;
he'll show you what you are to do."  The steward soon gave me plenty of
work cleaning up things; for the captain was a very particular man, and
would always have everything in the best possible order.

The next morning at daybreak, Mr Gale--whose watch it was at the time--
roused me up, and sent me to tell the captain that there was a strange
sail on the starboard-bow, which seemed inclined to cross our fore-foot.
The captain was soon on deck and examining the stranger with his glass.

"Well, what do you make of her, Mr Gale?" he asked.  She was a low,
little vessel, with considerable beam, and a large lateen mainsail, and
a jib on a little cock-up bowsprit--something like a 'Mudian rig.

"She's a suspicious-looking craft; and if it were not that we are
well-armed, and could sink her with a broadside, I should not much like
her neighbourhood, sir," answered the second mate.  As he spoke, a gun
was fired by the stranger, but not at us.

"He wants to speak us, at all events," observed Captain Helfrich.  "If
he had intended us mischief he would have fired at us, I should think."

"Not quite so certain of that, sir," answered Mr Jones, the first mate.
"Those pirating fellows are up to all sorts of tricks; and if he's
honest he belies himself, for a more roguish craft I never saw.  He
doesn't show any colours, at all events."

"We'll not be taken by surprise, then," answered the captain.  "Arm the
people, and see the guns all ready to run out.  Boy, get my pistols and
cutlass from the steward.  Tell him to show himself on deck; and let the
gentlemen in the cabin know that if they get up, they may find something
to amuse them."

I dived speedily below to deliver my message.  While the steward was
getting ready the captain's arms, I ran round to the berths of the
passengers.  One had heard me ask for the pistols; thus the report at
once went round among them that there was fighting in prospect.  In a
few minutes, therefore, several gentlemen in straw-hats, with yellow
nankeen trousers and gay dressing-gowns, appeared on deck.

"What!--is that little hooker the craft we are going to fight, captain?"
exclaimed one of them.  "We shouldn't have much difficulty in trouncing
her, I should think."

"Not the slightest, sir, if we have the chance," he answered.  "But her
crew would have no difficulty either in cutting all our throats, if we
once let them get on board!  The chances are that she has a hundred
desperadoes or more under hatches, and as she can sail round us like a
witch, they may choose their own time for coming alongside.  I tell you,
gentlemen, I would rather she were a hundred miles away than where she
is!"

These remarks of the captain very much altered the manner of some of the
gentlemen.  They were all ready enough to fight, but they put on much
more serious countenances than they had at first worn, and kept eyeing
the stranger curiously through their telescopes.  Still the stranger
kept bowling away before us on our starboard-bow, yawing about so as not
greatly to increase his distance from us.  If he could thus outsail us
before the wind, he would be very certain to beat us hollow on a wind.
We had, therefore, not the slightest prospect of being able to get away
from him so long as he chose to keep us company.  Suddenly he luffed up
with his head to the northward.

"He thinks that he had better not play us any tricks; he has found out
that we are too strong for him," observed Mr Jones.  Scarcely had the
mate spoken, when a dozen men or so appeared on the deck of the felucca,
and launched a boat from it into the water.  As soon as she was afloat,
two people stepped into her.  One seized the oars, and the other seated
himself in the stern-sheets.

"Well, that is a rum-looking little figure!"  I heard one of our
passengers exclaim, bursting into a fit of laughter.  "I wonder if he is
skipper of that craft?"

"She's not a craft that will stand much joking," observed the first
mate.  "See, sir; she has begun to show that she is not lightly armed."

He pointed to the deck of the felucca, on which there now appeared at
least full thirty men.  They looked like a fierce set of desperadoes.
They were of all colours, from the fair skin of the Saxon to the ebony
hue of some of the people of Africa.  The captain saw, I suppose, that
there was no use in trying to prevent the boat from coming alongside;
for had he done so, the felucca would very quickly have been after us
again, and might not another time have treated us so civilly.  He
therefore, as soon as the boat shoved off from the side of the felucca,
ordered the sails to be clewed up, to allow her more easily to approach.

As she pulled towards us, we were able to examine the people in her.  He
who sat in the stern-sheets was a little old man, with a little
three-cornered hat on his head, and a blue long-skirted coat and
waistcoat, richly laced.  He had on also, I afterwards saw,
knee-breeches, and huge silver buckles to his shoes.  His countenance
seemed wizened and dried up like a piece of parchment.  Some of the
younger passengers especially seemed to think him, by their remarks, a
fair subject for their ridicule.  The person who pulled was a huge
negro.  He must have been as tall as Peter Poplar, but considerably
stouter and stronger of limb.  He was clothed in a striped cotton dress
and straw-hat.  It would have been difficult to find two people
associated together more unlike each other.  The old man took the helm,
and by the way he managed the boat it was clear that he was no novice in
nautical affairs.  "What can he want with us!" exclaimed the captain.
"We'll treat him with politeness, at all events!"  Side-ropes and a
ladder were therefore prepared; but scarcely had the bowman's boat-hook
struck the side, than the old gentleman had handed himself up by the
main-chains on deck with the agility of a monkey, followed by the big
negro.  I then saw that he had a brace of silver-mounted pistols stuck
in his belt, and that he wore a short sword by his side; but the latter
was apparently more for ornament than use.  The negro also had a large
brace of pistols and a cutlass.  In the boat were two iron-clamped
chests, one of them being very large, the other small.

The old gentleman singled out the captain as soon as he reached the
deck, and walked up to him.  "Ah, Captain Helfrich, I am glad to have
fallen in with you!" he exclaimed, in a singularly firm and full voice,
with nothing of the tremulousness of age in it.  "I've come to ask you
for a passage to Jamaica, as I prefer entering Port-Royal harbour in a
respectable steady-going craft like yours, rather than in such a small
cockle-shell as is my little pet there!"  As he spoke he pointed with a
smile--and such a smile! how wrinkled and crinkled did his face become--
to the wicked-looking little felucca.

"Impossible, sir," answered the captain; "my cabins are already so
crowded that I could not accommodate another person!"

"Oh! how are the places of Mr Wilmot and Mr Noel occupied then?" asked
the stranger with a peculiar look.  They were the gentlemen who landed
at Saint Kitt's!

The captain started, and looked at his visitor with a scrutinising
glance; but he remained unabashed.

"How did you learn that?" asked the captain quickly.

"Oh, there are very few things which happen in these parts the which I
don't know," answered the stranger quietly.  "However, captain, even if
all your cabins are full, that excuse will not serve you.  I can stow
myself away anywhere.  I've been accustomed to rough it, and Cudjoe here
won't object to prick for a soft plank!"  The black, hearing his name
pronounced, grinned from ear to ear, though he said nothing.

Still the captain, who evidently could not make out who his visitor was,
and much mistrusted him, was about to refuse the request, when the old
gentleman took him by the button of his coat, as a man does a familiar
friend, and led him aside.  What was said I do not know, nor could I
judge from his countenance how the captain took the communication made
to him--I saw him start, and examine the old man attentively from head
to foot.  The result, I know, was that the boat and the chests were
hoisted on board--the sails were let fall and sheeted home.  The
stranger went to the taffrail and waved his hat.  On his doing this, the
felucca hauled her wind and stood to the northward.

Just under the companion-stair was a small cabin, which had been filled
with stores.  This was cleared out, and our strange passenger took
possession of it with his chests, while Cudjoe slept at the door.  He at
once made himself at home, and entered into conversation with every one.
No one seemed, however, inclined to quiz him.  When he was on deck, I
heard the gentlemen in the cabin wondering who he was, for none of them
had the slightest notion about the matter; and if the captain knew, he
certainly would not tell them.  The negro never spoke to any of the
passengers or crew.  Some said he was dumb; but I knew that was not the
case, for I often heard him and the old gentleman talking, but in a
language I could not understand.  His only care appeared to be to watch
over the old gentleman's chests, which had been placed in his cabin, and
to keep an eye on the little skiff which had brought them on board.

Those of the passengers who had lived in the West Indies could do
nothing for themselves, and were constantly wanting me to perform some
little job or other for them.  I was thus oftener in the cabin than out
of it.  While I was attending on them, my great amusement was listening
to the yarns which the old gentleman used to spin.  They took in all he
said for fact; but there used to be often a twinkle in his eye which
made me doubt the truth of all he said.

"A man who can look back the larger part of a century, as I have done,
must have heard a number of strange things, and seen a number of strange
people and strange sights, unless he has gone through the world with his
eyes and ears closed, which I have not," he remarked one day when
several of the passengers were collected in the cabin.  "Gentlemen, I
have served both on shore and afloat, and have seen as many shots fired
as most people.  I cannot quite recollect Admiral Benbow's action in
these seas, but I was afloat when that pretty man Edward Teach was the
terror of all quiet-going merchantmen.  His parents lived at Spanish
Town, Jamaica, and were very respectable people.  Some of his brothers
turned out very well; and one of them was in the king's service, in
command of a company of artillery.  He, however, at an early age showed
himself to be of a somewhat wildish disposition, and rather than submit
to control, ran away to sea.  For many years he knocked about, among not
the best of characters perhaps, in different parts of the world, till he
became as daring a fellow as ever stepped a plank.  In a short time,
while still very young, he got together a band of youths much of his own
way of thinking; and they commenced, after the old fashion, the life of
gentlemen rovers.  Their mode of proceeding was to run alongside any
merchantman they fell in with, which they thought would prove a prize
worth having.  Having taken possession of everything they wanted, they
then made every landsman walk the plank, as they did likewise every
seaman who would not join them.  Those only who would take their oaths,
and sign their articles, were allowed to live.  Mr Teach used to dress
himself out in a wild fashion, and as he wore a great black beard, he
certainly did look very ferocious.  From this circumstance he got the
name of Blackbeard.  I don't fancy that he committed all the acts
imputed to him, but he did enough to gain himself a very bad name.  The
governors of the West India Islands, in those days, and the American
settlements, were rather fonder of their ease than anything else, so
they allowed him to range those seas with impunity.  At last, however, a
naval officer, feeling indignant that one man should hold a whole
community in awe, undertook to destroy the pirate.  He got a ship fitted
out, well-armed and well-manned, and larger than any Teach was likely to
have with him.  After a long search, he fell in with the pirate.  Teach
had never given quarter, and it was not expected that he would take it.
More than half drunk, the pirates went to their quarters, and fought
more like demons than men.  The crew of the king's ship had to fight
desperately also.  For a long time it was doubtful which would come off
the conqueror.  At length, however, a large number of the pirates being
killed or wounded.  Teach was about to blow up his ship.  Before,
however, he could get below, his ship was boarded by his enemies, and he
had to defend himself from the attack of the gallant English officer.
For a long time he fought most desperately, but at last he was brought
on his knees; and as he would not surrender, he was cut down, and died
on the spot.  Scarcely a third of his men were taken alive, and they
were mostly wounded.  His head was cut off and carried to Virginia,
where it was stuck on a pole; and where the greater number of the
pirates taken were hung in chains, to show to others what very likely
would be their fate if they should design to follow the same course."

"Why, you seem to know so much about the matter, I suppose you were
there, sir," said one of the passengers, intending his remark to be
jocose.

"That is possible, young 'un," answered the old gentleman, fixing his
eyes on the speaker.  "Perhaps I formed part of the pirate crew; but you
don't fancy I was hung, do you?"

The young man did not venture a reply.

"I'll tell you where I saw some service," continued the old gentleman.
"The Spaniards had for a long time ruled it insultingly over the English
in these seas, fancying that, because we didn't bark, we could not bite.
At last a fleet was fitted out in England, and despatched to the West
Indies, under the command of Admiral Vernon, in 1739.  He first touched
at Jamaica, where he refreshed his men, and took on board a body of
troops and some pilots, as well as provisions; and, on the 5th of
November, sailed for the Spanish town of Porto Bello, which lies on the
north side of the Isthmus of Darien.  Its harbour and strong forts
afforded protection to the Guarda Costas, or Spanish cruisers, which
attempted to put a stop to the commerce of other nations in these seas;
and it was, likewise, the great rendezvous of the Spanish merchants from
various quarters.  The town consisted of five or six hundred houses, and
some public buildings.  The inhabitants depended almost entirely on the
fair, which was held there every two or three years, and which lasted
about six weeks.  The fair took place according to the time when the
galleons arrived from Carthagena, where they first touched to dispose of
part of their goods.  At Porto Bello they were met by the merchants from
Lima and Panama, who came, with millions of dollars, to purchase their
merchandise.  So crowded was the place during the fair, that there was
scarcely room to stow the chests of money!  The entrance of the harbour
is narrow, but widens within; and at the bottom lies the town, in the
form of a half moon.  At the east end of the town is a huge stable for
the mules employed in the traffic between it and Panama.  It is very
unhealthy, as on the east side there is a swamp; and in the harbour, at
low tide, a wide extent of black slimy mud is exposed, exhaling noisome
vapours.  The town was defended by three forts.  The Iron Fort was on
the north side of the harbour's mouth, and had a hundred guns.  The
Gloria Castle was a mile from the first, on the south side of the
harbour, and had a hundred and twenty guns.  And lastly, there was the
fort called Hieronymo, with twenty guns.  The Spaniards having been
warned of the approach of the English squadron by a fast-sailing vessel
which escaped from them, were prepared to receive them, and hoped to
send them to the bottom at once.  The fleet consisted only of the
_Burford_, commanded by the Admiral; the _Hampton Court_, Commodore
Brown; the _Norwich_, Captain Herbert; the _Worcester_, Captain Main;
the _Princess Louisa_, Captain Waterhouse; and the _Stafford_, Captain
Trevor.  On the 21st they came up with the harbour.  The _Hampton Court_
first entered, and came to action not a cable's length from the Iron
Fort; and in twenty-five minutes' time fired away about four hundred
shot; so that nothing was to be seen but fire and smoke.  The _Norwich_
came next, the _Worcester_ next, and then the Admiral, who anchored
within half a cable's length of the castle: and though he was warmly
received, the Spaniards were soon driven from their guns.  Then,
although no breach was made, the troops were landed, and the boats'
crews, climbing up through the embrasures, struck the Spanish flag and
hoisted the English colours!  The other two forts capitulated next day,
and all three were completely demolished; the Spanish troops being
allowed to march out with their arms.  The work was done by four ships,
for the other two had not come up; and its history serves to show what
men can do, if they are not afraid of the consequences.  The same
spirit, in a juster cause, animated Vernon which had animated Morgan and
the Buccaneers of old, and enabled them to succeed in their desperate
enterprises.  If a thing must be done, or should be done, never
calculate consequences.  If a thing is not urgent, then balance the
probable consequences against the value of the desired result.  That has
been my way through life, gentlemen.  I have never undertaken anything
unless I wished to succeed and had secured the necessary means; and then
I have guarded as best I could against unforeseen circumstances."

This was the sort of way the old gentleman talked.  He told the
gentlemen one day that he was not born when the earthquake occurred
during which Port-Royal was swallowed up; but that he had often heard
people speak of it who had witnessed it.  It began about noon on the 7th
of June 1692.  Nine-tenths of the city and all the wharves sunk at once;
and in two minutes from the commencement of the earthquake several
fathoms of water lay over the spot where the streets had just stood.
Two thousand persons perished.  Some, it was said, who were swallowed up
in one place, rose again in another still alive; but that I do not think
possible.  Very likely they were washed from one place to another,
clinging to beams or rafters; and not knowing, in their horror and
confusion, where they had been, were picked up and saved.  A mountain
toppled over into a river, and, by blocking up the course, a vast number
of fish were taken, which afforded food to many of the nearly starving
inhabitants.  Nearly all the vessels in the harbour were lost; but one
ship of war, the _Swan_ frigate, was driven over the tops of the houses
without capsizing.  She received but slight damage, and was the means of
saving many lives.  Scarcely had the earthquake ceased than a fever
broke out, which carried off numbers of people.  What with hurricanes,
plagues, insurrections of the blacks, and attacks from foreign foes,
Jamaica had an uneasy time of it; and it proves her unbounded resources
that, in spite of all drawbacks, she has continued wealthy and
flourishing.

The old gentleman said a great deal more about Jamaica, but this was the
substance, I know, of his remarks.  That there was something mysterious
about the old man was very evident.  The captain, I thought, stood
somewhat in awe of him, and in his absence never even alluded to him.
The rest of the passengers, however, indulged in all sorts of suspicions
about him, though they never expressed them, except among themselves.
They spoke freely enough before me, for they fancied, I believe, that I
did not understand them.  I was one day beginning to tell Peter what I
had been hearing.  "Jack," said he, "I have a piece of advice to give
you, which you'll find useful through life.  Never go and repeat what
you hear about anybody.  It's done by people through idleness sometimes,
and often through ill-nature, or with a downright evil intention; but
whatever is the cause, it's a contemptible propensity, and is certain to
lead to harm."  I promised that I would follow this advice, and I did
so.

Though we had light winds, the strong current which set in from east to
west across the Caribbean Sea helped us along, and enabled us to reach
Jamaica about seven days after we left Saint Kitt's.  After coasting
along some way, we cast anchor in Port-Royal Harbour, about five miles
from Kingston.  There were from two to three hundred sail of craft of
all sizes brought up in the harbour.

Scarcely had we dropped our anchor, when the wind, which had before been
very light, fell completely.  I saw the old gentleman come on deck, and
look round earnestly on every side, and then up at the sky.  He then
went to the captain, and took him aside.

"I tell you it will be down upon us before very long," I heard him say.
"House your topmasts, and range your cables, and have every anchor
you've got ready for letting go."

The captain seemed to expostulate: "Not another craft seems to be
expecting danger."

"Never mind what other crafts are doing," was the answer.  "Take the
warning of a man who has known these seas from his earliest days, and do
you be prepared.  If they are lost, it is no reason that you should be
lost with them."

The captain at last yielded to the advice of the old gentleman.  The
topmasts were struck and every particle of top hamper was got down on
deck.  The cables were all ranged, and two other anchors were carried
out ahead, while full scope was given to the best bower which we had
down.  The old gentleman went about the deck seeing that everything was
done properly.  Had we not, indeed, been well-manned the work could not
have been accomplished at all.  Oh, how hot and sultry it was!  I had
never before felt anything like it.  The pitch bubbled and boiled out of
the seams on the deck, and the very birds sought shelter far away in
some secluded spot.

"Why has the ship been gut into this condition?"  I asked of Peter.

"Because they think a hurricane is coming, Jack.  If there is, we have
just got into harbour in time.  I don't see any signs of it myself,
except the wind dropping so suddenly; but I suppose the officers know
best."

I told him that the old gentleman had persuaded the captain to prepare
for whatever was coming.

"Ah! he knows, depend on't, Jack," said Peter.  "I can't tell what it
is, but there is something curious about that old man.  He knows a great
deal about these parts."  Such was the opinion all forward had formed of
the stranger.

When the wind fell the sea became like a sheet of glass.  A feather
could not have moved over it.  It became hotter and closer than ever,
and we were glad to get anywhere out of the sun, stifling even as the
heat was below.  Even the old hands, who were inclined to laugh at the
newcomers' complaints of the heat, confessed that they would rather have
it cooler.  The rest of the vessels in the harbour, with few exceptions,
had not hitherto been prepared to meet any unusual tempest but lay as if
their crews were totally regardless of any signs of a change.  A few,
however, had followed our example by striking their topmasts and getting
out fresh anchors.

Some of the passengers, meantime, were very anxious to go on shore; but
the stranger urged them to remain on board, and assured them that before
they could be half-way there the hurricane would be upon them.  Two of
them, however, were incredulous.  The boat of a merchantman lying not
far from us, was just then passing with her master in her.

"Ah!  I know Captain Williams well.  If he is bound for Kingston, he
will give us a passage!" exclaimed one of the gentlemen; and he hailed
the boat.  She came alongside, and refusing all warning, they, taking
their portmanteaus, got into her.

"We'll take any message for anyone," they sung out jokingly as they
shoved off.  "The storm you are afraid of will blow over, depend on it."

"Fools are wise in their own conceit," muttered the old gentleman, as he
turned on his heel.  I remember, even now, the sound of their laughter
as they pulled away up the harbour.

The heat continued to increase, though a thick reddish haze overspread
the sky; but as yet not a vapour floated in it.  Suddenly, as if by
magic, from all quarters came hurrying up dark lowering clouds, covering
the whole concave of heaven, a lurid light only gleaming out from near
the horizon.  Then, amidst the most terrific roars of thunder, the
brightest flashes of lightning, and the rushing, rattling, crashing
sound of the tempest, there burst upon us a wind, which made the ship
reel like a drunken man, and sent the white foam, torn off the surface
of the harbour, flying over the deck in sheets, which drenched us
through and through.  In an instant, the surrounding waters were lashed
into the wildest foaming billows.  The vessels pitched fearfully into
the seas, and began, one after the other, to drag their anchors.  Some
broke adrift altogether, and were hurled along till they were cast
helplessly on the shore; and fortunate were any of the crew who could
scramble clear of the hungry waves which rolled after them up the beach.
Some of the smaller craft pitched heavily a few times, and then
apparently the sea rushed over them, and down they went to rise no more.
I was holding on all the time to the fore-rigging with hands and feet,
fearing lest I should be blown away, and expecting every moment to see
our turn come next to be driven on shore.  We were, however, exposed to
a danger on which I had not calculated: the vessels breaking adrift, or
dragging their anchors, might be driven against us, when we and they
would probably have been cast on shore or sunk together.  On land,
wherever we could see, a terrific scene of confusion and destruction was
taking place; tall trees bent and broke like willow wands, some were
torn up by their roots, and huge boughs were lifted high in the air and
carried along like autumn leaves; houses as well as huts were cast down,
and their roofs were carried bodily off through the air.  I doubted
whether I would rather be afloat or on shore, unless I could have got
into a deep cave, out of the way of the falling walls, and trees, and
roofs.  All this time every one was on deck,--the officers and crew at
their stations, ready to try and avert any danger which might threaten
us.  With a steady gale we might have cut or slipped and run out to sea;
but in a hurricane the wind might have shifted round before we were
clear of the land, and sent the ship bodily on shore.

While all hands were thus on the look-out, a boat, bottom uppermost, was
seen drifting down near us amidst the foaming waters.  One man was
clinging to the keel.  He looked imploringly towards us, and seemed to
be shrieking for aid.  No assistance could we give him.  I could
distinguish his countenance: it was that of one of the passengers who
had just before persisted in leaving the ship!  His companion, and the
master and crew, where were they?  He, poor wretch, was borne by us, and
must have perished among the breakers at the mouth of the harbour.  We
had not much time to think of him, for we soon had to look to our own
safety.  A large ship, some way inside of us, was seen to break adrift,
and soon after came driving down towards us.  Being twice our size, she
might speedily have sunk us.  Mr Gale and Peter were at the helm to try
and sheer the brig clear of her as she approached us.  This, however,
was not easily effected when there was but a slight current.  Down came
the ship!  "Stand by with your axes, my lads, to cut her clear if she
touches us!" shouted the captain.  The ship was still some way off, and
before she reached us, a schooner broke from her anchorage just ahead of
us and drove towards us.

The poor fellows on board stood ready to leap on our deck had she
touched us; but she just grazed by, her main-rigging for an instant
catching in ours.  A few strokes of an axe cut her clear, and before any
of her crew could reach us she was driven onward.  In another instant
the wind catching her side, she turned completely over.  There was a
wild shriek of despair from her hapless crew.  For a few moments they
struggled desperately for life; but the wind and the waves quickly drove
those off who had clung to the driving hulk, and soon not a trace of
them or her could we perceive.

While this was occurring the old man stood unmoved near the helm,
watching the approaching ship.  "Arm your people with axes, Captain
Helfrich, you'll want them," said he quietly.  His advice was followed.
The ship came driving down on us on the starboard bow.  It appeared that
if she struck us she must sink us at the moment.  Our helm was put to
starboard, and by sheering a little to the other side, we escaped the
dreaded blow.  At that instant she turned round, and her main-yard got
foul of our after-rigging.  This brought our sides together, and she
hung dragging on us.  Instantly all hands flew to cut her adrift, for
already we had begun to drag our anchors.  If we escaped sinking at
once, there was certain prospect of both of us being cast on shore.
Some of her crew endeavoured to get on board the _Rainbow_; but at the
moment they were making the attempt, down came our mainmast, crushing
several of our people beneath it.  I saw the captain fall, and I thought
he was killed.  The first mate was much hurt.  Still the ship hung to
us, grinding away at our side and quarter, and destroying our bulwark
and boats.  The foremast, it was evident, would soon follow the
mainmast, when the stranger wielding a glittering axe, sprung, with the
agility of a young man, towards the stays and other ropes which held
them, and one after the other severed them.  His example was followed by
Mr Gale and the crew, and in a shorter time than it has taken to
describe the scene, we were freed from our huge destroyer.  She went
away to leeward, and very soon met her fate.

Still the hurricane raged on.  We were not safe, for other vessels might
drive against us.  However, our next work was to clear the wreck.  No
one was more active in this than the stranger.  At first we thought that
the captain was dead; but the news spread that, though much injured, he
was still alive.  Almost blinded by the spray and rain and vivid
lightning, the crew worked on.  At length the storm ceased almost as
suddenly as it had begun; but words cannot describe the scenes of
destruction which were presented to our eyes on every side, wrecks
strewed the shore, and the plantations inland seemed but masses of ruin.
Night at last came, and the ship was made snug.  When I went on deck
early in the morning, I looked about for the stranger.  Neither he nor
his black attendant, nor his chests and boat were to be found.  Yet it
was declared that no one had seen them leave the ship!  This
unaccountable disappearance made all hands wonder still more who the
mysterious stranger could be.  Such was my first introduction to the
West Indies.



CHAPTER FOUR.

THE RETURN HOME.

"Hurrah! hurrah!  Erin-go-bragh!"  Such were the cries which the Irish
part of our crew uttered, and in which I through sympathy joined, as
once more the capstan was manned, and the anchor being hove up, and the
topsails sheeted home, we made sail for Dublin.  We had been longer than
usual at Kingston; for the damage the brig had received in the
hurricane, and the illness of the captain, which impeded the collection
of freight, had much delayed us.  In reality our return home brought
very little satisfaction to me.  I had no friends to see, no one to care
for me.  I therefore remained on board to assist the ship-keeper; and
the whole time we were in the Dublin dock I scarcely ever set my foot on
shore.

The same thing occurred after my second voyage.  I did not attempt to
form a friendship with anyone.  Not that I was of a sulky disposition;
but I was not inclined to make advances, and no one offered me his
friendship.  The ship-keeper, old Pat Hagan, had seen a great deal of
the world, and picked up a good deal of information in his time, and I
was never tired of listening to his yarns; and thus, though I had no
books, I learned more of things in general than if I had bad; for I was
but a bad reader at any time.  Pat trusted to a good memory, for he had
never looked into a book in his life.  Thus, with a pretty fair
second-hand knowledge of the world, I sailed on my third voyage to the
West Indies in the _Rainbow_.  We had the same officers, and several of
the crew had rejoined her, who were in her when I first went to sea.  I
had now become strong and active, and though still little and
young-looking, I had all my wits wide-awake, and knew well what I was
about.  The captain had taken another boy in the cabin instead of me,
and I was sent forward to learn seamanship; which was, in reality, an
advantage to me, though I had thus a rougher life of it than aft.  Still
I believe that I never lost the captain's good-will, though he was not a
man to talk to me about it.

Once more, then, the stout old brig was following her accustomed track
across the Atlantic.  Peter Poplar was also on board.  We had been about
a fortnight at sea, when, the ship lying almost becalmed with a blue sky
overhead, a large white cloud was seen slowly approaching us.  The lower
part hung down and grew darker and darker, till it formed almost a
point.  Below the point was a wild bubbling and boiling of the water,
although the surrounding sea was as smooth as glass.

"What can that be?" said I to Peter.  "Are there any fish there?"

"No--fish! certainly not; but you'll soon see," he answered.  "I wish it
were further off; I don't like it so near."

"Why, what harm can it do?"  I asked.

"Send as stout a ship as we are to the bottom with scant warning!" he
answered.  "That's a water-spout.  I've seen one rise directly ahead of
a ship, and before there was time to attempt to escape it, down it came
bodily on her deck like a heavy sea falling over a vessel.  She never
rose again, but went down like a shot."

"I hope that won't be our fate," said I.

At that moment the captain came on deck.  "Get ready a gun there,
forward!" he sung out.  "Quick now!"  While I had been talking to Peter,
a pillar of water had risen out of the sea, so it seemed; and, having
joined the point hanging from the cloud, came whirling towards us.  Had
there been sufficient wind to send the ship through the water, we might
have avoided it; but there was scarcely steerage-way on her.  I thought
of what Peter had just told me, and I thought if it does break over us,
it will certainly send us to the bottom.  The captain ordered the slow
match to be brought to him, and went forward to the gun, which had been
loaded and run out.  On came the water-spout.  I could not conceive what
he was going to do.  He stooped down, and, running his eye along the
gun, fired a shot right through the watery pillar.  Down came the liquid
mass with a thundering sound into the sea, but clear of the ship, though
even our deck got a little sprinkling; and when I looked up at the sky,
not a sign of a cloud was there.  Peter told me that we ought to be
thankful that we had escaped the danger so well, for that he had never
been in greater risk from a water-spout in his life.

We used frequently to catch dolphins during the passage, by striking
them with a small harpoon as they played under the bow of the brig.
They are not at all like the creatures I remember carved in stone at the
entrance of some gentleman's park near Dublin.  They measure about four
feet in length; are thick in the middle, with a green back and a yellow
belly, and have a sinking between the tip of the snout and the top of
the head; indeed, they are something like a large salmon.  We used to
eat them, and they were considered like a fat turbot.

Frequently flying-fish fell on our deck in attempting to escape from
their two enemies--the dolphin and the bonito: but they fell, if not
from the frying-pan into the fire, from the water into the frying-pan;
for we used to eat them also.  Indeed nothing comes amiss to a sailor's
mess.  The flying-fish, which is about the size of a herring, has two
long fins which serve it as wings; but it can only keep in the air so
long as its fins remain wet.  These fish, like herrings, also swim
together in large shoals, which, as their pursuers come among them,
scatter themselves far and wide.  Nothing very particular occurred on
the passage, till once more we made the land.

I went aloft when I heard the ever-welcome cry from the
foretopmast-head: "Land! land on the starboard bow!"  Then I saw it
rising in a succession of faint blue hills out of the sparkling sea.
Peter told me that it was the large island of Hispaniola, or Saint
Domingo, and that it belonged partly to Spain and partly to France; but
that there were a great number of blacks and coloured people there, many
of whom were free and possessed considerable wealth.  Not long after
this, in the year 1791, these coloured people rose on the whites, who
had long tyrannised over them, and having murdered vast numbers,
declared their island an independent kingdom.

We were entering, I found, the Caribbean Sea by the Porto Rico passage;
and were to coast along the southern shore on our course to Jamaica.
Now and then we were sufficiently close in with the land to make out
objects distinctly; but, in general, we kept well out at sea, as it is
not a coast seamen are fond of hugging.  The silvery mist of the early
morning still lay over the land, when, right ahead of us, the white
canvas of a vessel appeared shining brightly in the rays of the rising
sun.  The officer of the watch called the attention of the captain to
her.  Peter and I were also looking out forward.  "Why, Jack!" he
exclaimed, "she's the very craft which put that old gentleman aboard the
time we came away from Saint Kitt's, you remember?"

"Of course I do," said I.  "She is like her, at all events; and as for
that old gentleman, I shall not forget him and his ways in a hurry."

"He was a strange man, certainly," observed Peter.  "The captain seems
to have a suspicion about the craft out there.  See, he and the mates
are talking together.  They don't like her looks."

Still we stood on with all sails set.  Much the same scene occurred
which had happened before, when we saw the felucca off Saint Kitt's.
Ammunition was got up--the guns were all ready to run out--the
small-arms were served out--and the passengers brought out their pistols
and fowling-pieces.  Everybody, indeed, became very warlike and heroic.
Still the little craft which called forth these demonstrations, as she
lay dipping her bows into the swell, with her canvas of whiteness so
snowy, the emblem of purity, looked so innocent and pretty, that a
landsman would scarcely have expected any harm to come out of her.  Yet
those accustomed to the West Indies had cause to dread that style of
craft, capable of carrying a numerous crew, of pulling a large number of
oars, and of running up a narrow river, or shallow lagoon, to escape
pursuit.

At last we came up with the felucca.  She lay hove-to with her head
towards us.  There was, certainly, a very suspicious look about her,
from the very apathy with which the few people on deck regarded us.
However, as we looked down on her deck, we saw six guns lashed along her
bulwarks, and amidship there was something covered with a tarpaulin,
which might be a heavier gun than the rest.  We stood on till her
broadside was brought to bear on our counter.  At that moment, up sprung
from each hatchway some sixty as ugly-looking cut-throats as I ever wish
to see; and they were busily engaged in rapidly casting loose their
guns; and we were on the point of firing, when, who should we see on
their deck, but the old man who had been our passenger!  He instantly
recognised Captain Helfrich, who was standing near the taffrail, and
making a sign to the crew of the felucca, they dived below as quickly as
they had appeared.  He took off his three-cornered hat and waved it to
our captain, who waved his in return; and then he made a sign that he
would come on board us.

Instantly the captain ordered the sails to be clewed up.  Had the old
gentleman been an admiral, he could not have been obeyed more promptly.
A boat shoved off from the felucca with four hands in her, and he came
on board us.  The big negro was not with him, nor did I see him on the
deck of the felucca.  The captain and the stranger were closeted
together for a quarter of an hour or more; and the latter then coming on
deck, bowed, with somewhat mock politeness to the passengers, who were
assembled staring at him, and stepped into his boat.

No sooner had he gone, than we again made sail.  The felucca lay hove-to
some little time.  She then wore round, and stood after us.  So rapidly
did she come up with us, that it was very clear we had not the slightest
chance of getting away from her, however much we might wish to do so.
She kept us company all the day, and at night, in the first watch, I
could see her shadowy form gliding over the sea astern of us.

Peter and I talked the matter over together in a whisper.  "I'll tell
you what I think is something like the truth," said he.  "To my mind
it's this:--When the captain was a young man out in these parts, he fell
in with that old gentleman,--who isn't so old though as he pretends to
be.  Well, the captain went and did something to put himself in his
power; and that's the reason the captain is so afraid of him.  And then,
from what I see, I suspect that the captain saved him from drowning, or
maybe from hanging; or in some way or other preserved his life; and that
makes him grateful, and ready to do the captain a good turn; or, at all
events, prevents him from doing him a bad one.  If it was not for that,
we should have had all our throats cut by those gentry, if we hadn't
managed to beat them off; and that would have been no easy job.  I may
be wrong altogether, but this is what I think," continued Peter.
"There's one thing, particularly, I want to say to you, Jack: never go
and do anything wrong, and fancy that it will end with the thing done.
There's many a man who has done a wrong thing in his youth, and has gone
through life as if he had a rope round his neck, and he has found it
turning up here and there, and staring him in the face when he has least
expected it.  When once a bad thing is done, you can't get rid of it--
you can't undo it--you can't get away from it, any more than you can
call the dead to life.  You may try to forget it; but something or other
will always remind you of it, as long as you live.  Then, remember there
is another life we've got to look to, when every single thing we've done
on earth must be remembered--must be acknowledged--must be made known.
You and I, and every sailor, should know that any moment we may be sent
into another world to begin that new life, and to stand before God's
judgment-seat.  I think of this myself sometimes; but I wish that I
could think of it always; and that I ever had remembered it.  Had I
always thought of that awful truth, there are many things I could not
possibly have ventured to do which I have done; and many things which I
have left undone, which I should have done.  Jack, my boy, I say I have
done you some little good, but there's no good I could ever possibly do
you greater than teaching you to remember that truth always.  But I must
not knock off this matter without warning you, that I may be thinking
unjustly of the captain: and I certainly would not speak to anyone else
aboard as I have done to you."

I thanked Peter for the advice he had given me, and promised that I
would not repeat what he had said.

"Can you see the felucca, Tillson?"  I heard Mr Gale say to Tom, who
was reputed to have the sharpest eyes aboard.

"No, sir; she's nowhere where she was," he answered, after peering for
some time into the darkness astern.

We all kept looking out for some time, but she did not reappear.  The
mate seemed to breathe more freely, and I must say that I was glad to be
rid of the near neighbourhood of the mysterious stranger.  When morning
broke, she was nowhere to be seen.  Whenever, during that and the
following days, a sail appeared anywhere abaft the beam, till her rig
was ascertained, it was instantly surmised that she was the felucca
coming back to overhaul us.  Even the mates did not seem quite
comfortable about the matter; and the captain was a changed man.  His
usual buoyant spirits had deserted him, and he was silent and
thoughtful.  I could not help thinking that Peter's surmises were
correct.

At last we brought up once more in Port-Royal Harbour.  Having landed
our passengers, and discharged our cargo, we sailed again for Morant
Bay, Saint Thomas's, and other places along the coast, to take in a
freight of sugar, which was sent down in hogsheads from the plantations
in the neighbourhood.

We were rather earlier than usual, and we had some time to wait till the
casks were ready for us.  On one of these occasions the captain was
invited by a planter, Mr Johnstone by name, to pay him a visit at his
farm, which was some way up the country.  In that climate every
gentleman has a servant to attend on him; and all the planters, and
others who live there, always have negroes to help them to wash and
dress in the morning, to put on their stockings, and all that sort of
thing.  As the captain had no black fellow to wait on him, he told me
that he should want me to accompany him, and I was too glad to have a
chance of seeing something of the country.  Meantime, to collect our
freight faster, he had chartered a schooner which was lying idle in the
harbour, and sent her round to the various smaller ports to pick it up,
and to bring it to the brig.  He had put her under charge of Mr Gale,
who had with him Peter Poplar and several other of our men, and also a
few blacks, who were hired as seamen.

I thought it very good fun when I found myself once more on a horse; I
had not got on the back of one since I was a little boy in Dublin, and
then, of course, there was no saddle nor stirrups, and only an old rope
for a bridle.  They are generally razor-backed beasts, with one or two
raws, and blind, at least, of one eye.  The captain was mounted on a
strong Spanish horse well able to bear him, and I followed on a frisky
little animal with his valise and carpet-bags.

I wish that I could describe the wonderful trees we passed.  I remember
the wild plantains, with huge leaves split into slips, and their red
seed-pods hanging down at the end of twisted ropes; the tall palms, with
their feathery tops; the monster aloes, with their long flashy thorny
leaves; and the ferns as large as trees, and yet as beautifully cut as
those in our own country, which clothed every hillside where a fountain
flowed forth; and then the countless variety of creepers, whose
beautiful tracery crowned every rock, and hung down in graceful festoons
from the lofty trees.  Now and then, as passing through a valley and
mounting a hill, we stopped and looked back, we caught sight of the blue
sparkling sea, with the brig and other vessels in the harbour; a few
white sails glancing in the sun, between it and the horizon; and nearer
to us, valleys with rich fields and streams of water, and orchards of
oranges, limes, and shaddocks; and planters' houses with gardens full of
beautiful flowers, and negro huts under the shade of the plantain-trees.
Then there were those forest-giants, the silk-cotton-trees, and various
kinds of fig-trees and pines, such as in the old world are never seen.
But the creepers I have spoken of make the woods still more curious, and
unlike anything at home.  First, a creeper drops down from a branch 150
feet high, and then another falls close to it, and the wind blows and
twists them together; others grow round it till it takes root, and form
a lofty pillar which supports the immense mass of twisting and twining
stems above.  As we rode along, I saw from many a lofty branch the
net-like nests of the corn-bird hanging at the end of long creepers.
Those mischievous rascals, the monkeys, are fond of eggs, and will take
great pains to get them; so the corn-bird, to outwit them, thus secures
her nest.  It has an entrance at the bottom, and is shaped like a
net-bag full of balls.  There the wise bird sits free from danger,
swinging backwards and forwards in the breeze.

We slept that night at the house of a friend of the captain's, who had
come out with him in the brig.  It was a low building of one storey,
with steps leading up to it, and built chiefly of wood.  A veranda ran
all the way round it.  The rooms were very large, but not so handsomely
furnished, I thought, as the captain's cabin.  People do eat curious
food in the West Indies.  Among other things, there was a monkey on the
table; but if it had not been for the name of the thing, I cannot say
there was any harm in it.  I got a bit of it after it was taken from the
table, and it was very like chicken.  There were lizards and snakes,
which were very delicate.  There was a cabbage cut from the very top of
a lofty tree, the palmetto; but that tree is too valuable to be cut down
often for the purpose.  Then there were all sorts of sweetmeats and
dishes made with them.  I recollect a mass of guava-jelly swimming in a
bowl full of cream, and wine, and sugar, and citron.  There were plenty
of substantials also; and wines and liquids of all sorts.  I know that I
thought I should very much like to live on shore, and turn planter.  I
had reason afterwards to think that they had bitters as well as sweets
to taste, so I remained contented, as I have ever been, with my lot.

At night, the captain had a sofa given him to sleep on in the
dining-room, and I had a rug in another corner.  It was many a long
night since I had slept on shore, and I was constantly startled by the
strange noises I heard.  Often it was only the wind rustling in the
palm-trees; but when I opened my eyes, I saw one whole side of the room
sparkling with flashes of light; then it would burst forth on the other
side; and then here and there single bright stars would gleam and
vanish; and lastly, the entire roof would be lighted up.  I dared not
wake the captain to ask what was the matter, and it was not till
afterwards that I discovered that the light was produced by fireflies,
which are far more brilliant than the glow-worms of more northern
climes.  I had gone to sleep, when, just before daybreak, I was again
awoke by a most terrific yelling, and screeching, and laughing, and
roaring.  I thought that the savages were down upon us, or that all the
wild beasts in the country were coming to devour us.  I could stand it
no longer, but shrieked out, "O captain, captain! what's going to happen
us?"  The captain started up, and listened, and then burst into a fit of
laughter.  "Why, you young jackanapes, they are only some of your
brothers, the monkeys, holding a morning concert," said he.  "Go to
sleep again; don't rouse me up for such nonsense as that."

I found afterwards that the noise did proceed only from monkeys, though
I did not suppose that such small animals could have made such hideous
sounds.  To go to sleep again, however, I found was impossible, as I had
already enjoyed much more than I usually got on a stretch.  The captain,
on the contrary, went off again directly; but his sleep was much
disturbed, for he tumbled about and spoke so loudly, that at times I
thought he was awake and calling me.  "You'll make me, will you?"  I
heard him say.  "I don't fear you, Captain Ralph.  I--a pirate--so I
might have been called--I was but a lad--I consented to no deed of
blood--It cannot be brought against me--Well, I know--I know--I
acknowledge my debt to you.--You exact it to the uttermost--I'll obey
you--The merchants deem me an honest trader--What would they say if they
heard me called pirate?--Ha, ha, ha?"  He laughed long and bitterly.

I was very glad that no one else was in the room to hear what the
captain was saying.  A stranger would certainly have thought much worse
of him than he deserved.  I had now been so long with him that I was
confident, whatever he might have done in his youth, that he was now an
honest and well-intentioned man.  At the same time I could no longer
have any doubts that Peter's surmises about him were correct, "That old
gentleman aboard the felucca is Captain Ralph, then," I thought to
myself, "If I ever fall in with him, I shall know how to address him, at
all events."  At length the captain awoke; and after an early breakfast,
the owner took him round the plantation, and I was allowed to follow
them.

The sugar-cane grows about six feet high, and has several stalks on one
root.  It is full of joints, three or four inches apart.  The leaves are
light green; the stalk yellow when ripe.  The mode of cultivation is
interesting.  A trench is dug from one end of the field to the other,
and in it longways are laid two rows of cane.  From each joint of these
canes spring a root and several sprouts.  They come up soon after they
are planted, and in twelve weeks are two feet high.  If they come up
irregularly, the field is set on fire from the outside, which drives the
rats, the great destroyers of the cane, to the centre, where they are
killed.  The ashes of the stalks and weeds serve to manure the field,
which often produces a better crop than before.  The canes are cut with
a billhook, one at a time; and being fastened together in faggots, are
sent off to the crushing-mill on mules' backs or in carts.  Windmills
are much in use.  The canes are crushed by rollers and as the juice is
pressed out, it runs into a cistern near the boiling-house.  There it
remains a day, and is then drawn off into a succession of boilers, where
all the refuse is skimmed off.  To turn it into grains, lime-water is
poured into it; and when this makes it ferment, a small piece of tallow,
the size of a nut, is thrown in.  It is next drawn into pots to cool,
with holes in the bottom through which the molasses drain off.  Rum is
made from the molasses, which being mixed with about five times as much
water, is put into a still.

There are three sorts of _cotton-trees_.  One creeps on the earth like a
vine; another is a bushy dwarf tree; and the third is as high as an oak.
The second-named, after it has produced very beautiful flowers about
the size of a rose, is loaded with a fruit as large as a walnut, the
outward coat of which is black.  This fruit, when it is fully ripe,
opens, and a down is discovered of extreme whiteness, which is the
cotton.  The seeds are separated from it by a mill.

The stem of the cacao-tree is about four inches in diameter.  In height
it is about twelve feet from the ground.  The cacao grows in pods shaped
like cucumbers.  Each pod contains from three to five nuts, the size of
small chestnuts, which are separated from each other by a white
substance like the pulp of a roasted apple.  The pods are found only on
the larger boughs, and at the same time the tree bears blossoms and
young fruit.  The pods are cut down when ripe, and allowed to remain
three or four days in a heap to ferment.  The nuts are then cut out, and
put into a trough covered with plantain-leaves, where they remain nearly
twenty days; and, lastly, dried three or four weeks in: the sun.  Indigo
is made from an herb not unlike hemp.  This is cut, and put into pits
with water; and being continually stirred up, forms a sort of mud,
which, when dry, is broken into bits for exportation.

I will mention one plant more of general use--coffee.  It is a shrub,
with leaves of a dark-green colour.  The berries grow in large clusters.
The bean is enclosed in a scarlet pulp, often eaten, but very luscious.
One bush produces several pounds.  When the fruit is ripe, it turns
black, and is then gathered; and the berries, being separated from the
husk, are exposed to the sun till quite dry, when they are fit for the
market.

However, I might go on all day describing the curious plants, and trees,
and animals, and birds I saw.  I must speak of the ginger.  The blade is
not unlike that of wheat.  The roots, which are used, are dug up and
scraped free from the outward skin by the negroes.  This is the best way
of preparing it, and it is then soft and white; but often, from want of
hands, it is boiled, when the root becomes hard and tough, and is of
much less value.

I shall never forget the beautiful humming-birds, with magnificent
plumage gleaming in the sun, and tongues fine as needles, yet hollow,
with which they suck the juices from flowers.

We did not, on account of the heat, recommence our journey till the
afternoon.  The planter accompanied us.  I heard him and the captain
talking about the outbreaks of the fugitive negroes in former days.
"They are a little inclined to be saucy just now," I heard him remark.
"But we taught them a lesson which they will not easily forget.  Those
we caught we punished in every way we could think of.  Hanging was too
mild for them.  Some we burned before slow fires; others were tied up by
the heels; and others were lashed to stakes, their bodies covered over
with molasses to attract the flies, and then allowed to starve to death.
Oh, we know how to punish rebels in this country."

I listened to what the planter was saying.  I could scarcely believe the
testimony of my ears.  Was it really a man professing to be a Christian
thus talking, thus boasting of the most horrible cruelties which even
the fiercest savages could not surpass?

The captain replied, that he supposed they deserved what they got,
though, for his part, he thought if a man was deserving of death, he
should be hung or shot outright, but that he did not approve of killing
people by inches.

From what I heard I was not surprised to find that there were large
numbers of these revolted negroes, under the name of Maroons, living
among the mountain-fastnesses in the interior of the island, where they
could not be reached; that their numbers were continually augmented by
runaway slaves; and that they declined to submit to the clemency of the
whites.  It was quite dark before we reached the house of the planter,
where the captain proposed to spend a few days.  It stood on the side of
a hill covered with trees, and had a considerable slope below it.  It
was a rough wooden edifice, of one storey, though of considerable size,
and had a veranda running round it.  Besides the owner, there were the
overseer, and two or three white assistants; and an attorney, a
gentleman who manages the law business of an estate; and two English
friends.  Altogether, there was a large party in the house.  During
dinner the company began to talk about pirates, and I saw the captain's
colour change.  The attorney said that several piracies had been
committed lately in the very neighbourhood of Jamaica; and that unarmed
vessels, in different parts of the West Indies, were constantly attacked
and plundered.  They remarked that it was difficult to find out these
piratical craft.  Sometimes the pirates appeared in one guise and
sometimes in another; at one time in a schooner, at others in a felucca,
or in a brig; and often even in open boats.  "Yes," observed the
attorney, "they seem to have excellent information of all that goes on
in Kingston.  I suspect that they have confederates on shore, who tell
them all they want to know."  I thought the captain would have fallen
off his chair, but he quickly recovered himself, and no one appeared to
have remarked his agitation.  They did carry on, to be sure!  What
quantities of wine and rum-punch they drank!  How their heads could
stand it I don't know.  Two or three of them did roll under the table,
when their black slaves came and dragged them off to bed; which must
have raised them in the negroes' opinion.  Even the captain, who was
generally a very sober man, got up and sang songs and made speeches for
half an hour when no one was listening.  At last the slaves cleared the
dining-room, and beds were made up there for several of the party.  I
was afraid that the captain might begin to talk again in his sleep of
his early days, and accuse himself of being a pirate; and I was anxious
to warn him, lest anyone might be listening; but then, I thought to
myself, they are all so drunk no one will understand him, and he won't
like to be reminded by me of such things as that.

The night seemed to be passing quietly away.  As I lay on a rug in the
corner of the room, I could hear the sound of some night-birds, or
frogs, or crickets, and the rustling of the wind among the
plantain-leaves, till I fell asleep.  Before long, however, I started
up, and thought that the monkeys had begun their concert at an earlier
hour than usual.  There were the most unearthly cries and shrieks
imaginable, which seemed to come from all sides of the house, both from
a distance and close at hand.  For a moment all was silent, and then
they were repeated louder than before.  Had not the company been heavy
with drink, they must have been awoke at once.  As it was, the second
discharge of shrieks and cries roused them up, and in another minute
people came rushing into the dining-hall from different parts of the
house, their pale countenances showing the terror they felt.  "What's
the matter? what's all this?" they exclaimed.

"That the negroes have come down from the hills, and that we shall all
be murdered!" exclaimed the master of the house, who had just hurried in
with a rifle in his hand.  "Gentlemen, we may defend ourselves, and sell
our lives dearly, but that is all I can hope for."

"Let us see what can be done," said Captain Helfrich coolly.  "This
house may not stand a long siege, perhaps, though we'll do our best to
prepare it.  We'll block up the windows and all outlets as fast as we
can.  See, get all the rice and coffee bags to be found, and fill them
with earth; we may soon build up a tolerably strong fortification."

The captain's confidence and coolness encouraged others, and every one
set to work with a will to make the proposed preparations.  All the
household slaves, and several blacks residing in the neighbouring huts
had come into the house to share their master's fortunes but the greater
number had run away and hid themselves.  There was no lack of muskets
and ammunition; indeed, there were among us weapons sufficient to arm
twice as many men as were assembled.  The white gentlemen were generally
full of fight, and began to talk hopefully of quickly driving back the
Maroons: but the blacks were in a great state of excitement, and ran
about the house chattering like so many monkeys, tumbling over each
other, and rather impeding than forwarding the work to be done.

Though matters were serious enough, I, with a youngster's
thoughtlessness, enjoyed a fit of laughter while we were in the middle
and hottest hurry of our preparations.  It happened that two stout
blackies rushed into the hall from different quarters, one bearing on
his back a sack of earth, the other a bundle of canes or battens.  Tilt
they went with heads stooping down right against each other.  Their
skulls met with a clap like thunder, and both went sprawling over on
their backs, with their legs up in the air.  The sack burst, and out
tumbled the earth; and the bundle of canes separating, lay in a confused
heap.

"For what you do dat, Jupiter?" exclaimed he of the canes, as he jumped
up ready to make another butt at his opponent.

"Oh, ki! you stupid Caesar, you 'spose I got eyes all round," replied
Jupiter, leaping on his legs with the empty sack hanging round his nook,
and stooping down his head ready to receive the expected assault.

The black knights were on the point of meeting, and would probably each
have had another fall, when one of the overseers passing bestowed a few
kicks upon Caesar.  Off ran the hero, and Jupiter expecting the same
treatment, took himself off to bring in a fresh bag of earth.

Ten minutes or a quarter of an hour passed away, but still the rebels
did not commence their attack.  The overseer said that they had uttered
the shrieks to frighten us, and also to get the slaves to desert us,
that they might murder us alone.  I should have supposed that, like
other savages, they would have crept silently on us, so as to have taken
us unawares; but negroes, I have remarked, seldom act like other races
of people.

During the short time which had passed since the alarm was given, we had
made very tolerable preparations to receive the rebels.  I had been
running about, trying to make myself as useful as I could, when the
captain called me up to him.

"I'm glad to see you wide-awake, Jack," said he.  "Remember, when the
fight begins, as it will before long, stick close to me.  I may want to
send you here and there for something or other; and if the worst comes,
and we are overpowered, we must try to cut our way out through the
rascals.  Now set to work, and load those muskets; you know how, I
think.  Ay, that will do; keep loading them as fast as I discharge them.
We may teach the Niggers a lesson they don't expect."

I was very proud of being thus spoken to by the captain, for it was the
first time that he had ever condescended to address me in so familiar a
way.  It was generally--"Boy, bring me my shoes;" "Jump forward there,
and call the carpenter."  I resolved to do my best not to disappoint
him.

I placed the powder-flask and bullets on one side of me, and the muskets
on the other, so that I could load one after the other without altering
my position.  It never occurred to me all the time that there was the
slightest degree of danger.  I thought that we had only to blaze away at
the Niggers, and that they would run off as fast as their legs could
carry them.

Never was I more mistaken.  Soon after the captain had spoken to me we
were startled by another thunder-clap of shouts, and shrieks, and
unearthly cries, followed by several shot, the ringing taps which
succeeded each showing that the bullets had struck the house.  Presently
a negro, who had been sent to keep a look-out on the roof, came tumbling
through a skylight, exclaiming, "Dey is coming, dey is coming, oh ki!"
Directly after this announcement, the shrieks and cries were heard like
a chorus of demons, and it was evident that our enemies were closely
surrounding us.  Whichever way we turned, looking up the hill or down
the valley, the terrific noises seemed to come loudest and most
continuous from that quarter.

Captain Helfrich, as if by the direct appointment of all, took the
command.  "Now, my lads, be steady," he exclaimed; "don't throw your
shots away.  You'll want all you've got, and a bullet is worth the life
of a foe."

Each man on this grasped his musket; but the negroes held theirs as if
they were very much more afraid of the weapons doing them harm than of
hurting their enemies.  The greater number of the lights in the house
had been put out, a few lanterns only remaining here and there,
carefully shaded, to show us our way about.  Not a word or a sound was
uttered by any of us, and thus in darkness and silence we awaited the
onslaught of our enemies.



CHAPTER FIVE.

THE PLANTER'S HOUSE BESIEGED.

The Maroons did not leave us long in suspense.  Once more uttering the
most fearful and bewildering shrieks, they advanced from every quarter,
completely surrounding, as we judged, the house.  For a minute they
halted, and must have fired every musket they had among them.  Loopholes
had been left in all the windows, and every now and then I peeped
through one of them, to try and discover what was taking place.  There
was just sufficient light to enable me to see the dusky forms of the
rebels breaking through the fences and shrubberies which surrounded the
house.  As they arrived, they formed in front, dancing, and shrieking,
and firing off their muskets and blunderbusses in the most irregular
fashion, expending a great deal of gunpowder, but doing us no harm.

Captain Helfrich was watching them.  When some hundreds had been thus
collected, he suddenly exclaimed, "Now, my lads, give it them!  Don't
throw your shots away on the bushes!"

Obedient to the order, every man in the house fired, and continued
firing as fast as he could load his musket.  I dropped on my knee
alongside the arms the captain had appropriated, and as I handed a
loaded musket to him he gave me back the one he had fired, which I
reloaded as rapidly as I could.

This continued for some minutes, the constant shrieks and groans of our
black assailants showing us that the shot frequently took effect.  I
believe, indeed, that very few of the captain's missed.  Though he fired
rapidly, it was always with coolness and steadiness, and it appeared to
me that he had singled out his victim before he turned round to take the
musket from me.

As yet none of our people had been killed, though some of the enemy's
shot had found their way through the loopholes in the windows and doors.
Growing, however, more desperate at the loss of their companions, and
burning for revenge, they rushed up closer to the house, pouring in
their fire, which searched out every hole and cranny.  Some of the
slaves who incautiously exposed themselves were the first to suffer.  A
poor fellow was standing at the window next to me.  A bullet struck him
on the breast.  It was fired from a tree, I suspect.  Down he fell,
crying out piteously, and writhing in his agony.  It was very dreadful.
Then the blood rushed out of his mouth in torrents, and he was quiet.  I
sprang forward, intending to help him.  The pale light of the lantern
fell on his countenance.  He looked perfectly calm.  I thought he was
resting, and would get up soon and fire away again.  My glance was but
momentary, for the captain called me back to my post.

The fire on this became hotter and hotter.  Two more negroes were
struck.  They did not fall, but cried out most piteously.  One of the
English gentlemen was next shot.  He fell without a groan.  The captain
told me to run and see where he was hurt.  I tried to lift him up, but
his limbs fell down motionless.  There was a deep hole in his forehead,
through which blood was bubbling.  I suspected the truth that he was
dead.  I told the captain that he was hit on the head.  "Leave him,
then, Jack," said he; "you can do him no good."

On my return, I looked at the negro who had been first hit.  He, too,
was motionless.  I tried to place him in a sitting posture, but he fell
back again.

"Let him alone, Jack," cried the captain; "his work is done; he's no
longer a slave."

I thus found that the negro also was dead.  It seemed very dreadful to
me; I burst into tears.

I cried heartily as I knelt loading the muskets, forgetting that in a
short time the captain, and I, and every one in the house, might be in
the same state.  Had not the whites shown great determination, all must
before this have fallen victims to the rage of the Maroons.  Numbers of
our enemies were shot, but still they rushed on, resolved to destroy the
house and all in it.

While the uproar they made was at its height, a loud battering was heard
at one of the doors.  The enemy had cut down the trunk of a young tree,
and were endeavouring to break in the door with it.  The captain and the
other gentlemen shot down several who were thus engaged, but still they
persevered; and, as some fell, fresh assailants rushing up, seized the
battering-ram, and continued the work.  The door was stout, but we saw
that it was giving way.  It began to crack in every direction.  Pieces
of furniture and sand-bags were piled up against it, but with little
avail.  Each blow shattered a part of it, and soon, with a loud crash,
it was driven in, and the fierce, excited faces of our dark foes were
seen above the barricade formed by the bags, and furniture, and broken
door.  Several who attempted to pass over it were shot down, but our
people being now much more than ever exposed to the fire of the enemy,
proportionably suffered.  The shot came in thick among us, and one after
the other was wounded.

While the captain and others were defending the breach, the
battering-ram was withdrawn; why, we were not long left in doubt.  To
our great horror, the battering, cracking sound was heard in the rear of
the house.  Still we were not at once to be defeated, and some of our
party hurried to defend the spot.  The attack on the front-door had cost
the negroes so many lives that they were more cautious in approaching
the second; and, when our party began to fire, they retreated under
shelter, leaving the trunk of the tree on the ground.  At the same time,
they began apparently to weary of their ill success in front of the
house; for of course they could not be aware that they had killed any of
its defenders.  We were thus hoping that they would at length withdraw,
when the whole country in front of us seemed to burst into flame.

"They have set the fields on fire!" exclaimed the planter.

"No, no," said Captain Helfrich; "worse than that--see there?  Our watch
is out, depend on that.  Not one of us will see another sun arise.  So,
my men, let us sally out, and sell our lives dearly."

I looked through one of the loopholes to see what he meant.  Emerging
from among the trees came hundreds of dusky forms, each man bearing in
his hand a torch which he flourished wildly above his head, dancing and
shrieking furiously.

I thought the captain's advice would be followed, but it was not.  The
rest of the party were either too badly wounded or wanted nerve for the
exploit, and the slaves could not be depended on.  All we did was to
guard the battered-in door, and to fire away as before.

On came the Maroons with their frantic gestures, and, to our horror, as
soon as they reached the door, they began to throw their torches in
among us.  At first we tried to trample out the fire under foot, but
they soon outmastered our powers, and the furniture which composed our
barricade ignited, so did the walls of the house, and the negroes
shrieking and cheering, encouraged each other in throwing in fresh
torches to overwhelm us.  Still, induced to fight on by my gallant
captain, we continued our exertions, when the attack on the back-door
was renewed.  It gave way!  Loud shouts burst from the Maroons.  Their
revenge was about to be satiated.

"Now, my lads, follow me," shouted the captain; "we'll cut our way
through them.  Stick to me, Jack, whatever you do!"

As he said this, he seized a cutlass which lay on the ground, and,
before the negroes had time to bring the torches round to that side, he
rushed through the back-door which they had just battered down.  I clung
to his skirts as he told me, springing along so as not to impede him;
and so heartily did he lay about him with his weapon, cutting off by a
blow a head of one and an arm of another, that he speedily cleared
himself a wide passage.  Several of our party endeavoured to follow him
with such weapons as they could seize, but, unable to make the progress
he did, they were either knocked down and captured or killed on the
spot.  On we went towards the wood behind the house, but we had still
numberless enemies on every side of us,--enemies who seemed resolved not
to allow any of their intended victims to escape them.  I did not think
it possible that any man could keep so many foes at bay as did the
captain.  Just as I thought we should escape, his foot caught in a
snake-like creeping root which ran along the ground.  Over he went
almost flat on his face; but he did not lose a grasp of his sword.  He
tried to rise, and I endeavoured to pull him up.  He was almost once
more on his feet, when another creeper caught his foot.  Again he fell,
and this time our enemies were too quick for him.  Rushing on him by
hundreds, they threw themselves on his body, almost suffocating him as
they held him down by main force.  I was treated much in the same way,
when a huge negro caught me up by the back of the neck, and made as if
he was about to cut off my head.  He did not do so, but held me tightly
by the collar while the rest secured the captain.

Flames were now bursting forth from every part of the planter's house,
and lighted up the surrounding landscape,--the tall plantains and cotton
and fig-trees, the tangled mass of creepers and their delicate tracery
as they hung from their lofty boughs, the fields of sugar-cane, the
cactus-bushes, and numberless other shrubs, and the grey sombre
mountain-tops beyond.  From the way the blacks were running here and
there in dense masses, and the excited shouts I heard, I discovered that
they were in pursuit of some of the late defenders of the house, who,
when too late, were endeavouring to make their escape.  Had they closely
followed the captain, they might all, perhaps, have cut their way
through the enemy.

The blacks seemed to consider the captain a perfect Samson, for they
lashed his arms and legs in every way they could think of; and then
making a sort of litter, they put him on it, and carried him along
towards the mountains.  They treated me with less ceremony.  My first
captors handed me over to four of them, who contented themselves with
merely binding my arms, and driving me before them at the points of
their weapons.  Now and then one of them, more vicious than the rest,
would dig the point of his spear into me, to expedite my movement.  I
could not help turning round each time with a face expressive, I
daresay, of no little anger or pain, at which his companions all
laughed, as if it were a very good joke.  They seemed to do this to
recompense themselves for the loss of the booty they might have supposed
the rest were collecting from the burning house.

We had not proceeded far before we were joined by a large band, carrying
along, bound hand and foot, the survivors among the defenders of the
house.  The planter himself, and four or five of his guests, were there,
and seven or eight slaves.  From the disappearance of the rest of the
Maroons, I concluded that they had gone off to attack some other
residences.

On we went hour after hour, and when the sun rose, exposed to its
broiling heat, without stopping.  The negroes ate as they went along,
but gave us nothing.  It would have been a painful journey, at all
events; but when we expected to be tortured and put to death at the end
of it, I found it doubly grievous to be endured.  I longed for a dagger,
and that I might find my arms free, to fight my way out from among them.
At last I thought that it would be the best way to appear totally
unconcerned when they hurt me, so that I became no longer a subject for
their merriment.

At length, about noon, we stopped to rest; and most of our guards, after
eating their meal of plantains, went to sleep.  I thought that it would
be a good opportunity to try and get near the captain, to learn if he
thought that there was any chance of our escaping.  Some few of the
Maroons, with arms in their hands, sat up watching us narrowly; I
therefore put on as unconcerned a manner as possible, and lay down on
the ground, pretending to go to sleep likewise.  I in return watched our
guards, and one by one I saw sleep exerting its influence over them.
Their eyes rolled round in their heads like those of owls; their heads
nodded; then they looked up, trying to appear prodigiously wise; but it
would not do, and at length the whole camp was asleep.  I considered
that now or never was my time for communicating with the captain.
Though I saw that no one near was likely to observe me, I thought that
some one at a distance might, and therefore that it would be necessary
to be cautious.  Instead of getting up and walking, I rolled myself
gently over and over till I got close up to him.

"Captain," said I, very softly--"Captain Helfrich, sir.  I am here.
What can I do?"

He was drowsy, and at first did not hear me; but soon rousing himself,
he turned his eyes towards me, for he could not move his head.  "Ah,
Jack! is that you?" said he; "we are in a bad plight, lad."

"Do you think the savages are going to kill us, sir?" said I.

"No doubt about it, Jack, if we are not rescued, or don't manage to
escape," he answered.  "I see little prospect of either event."

"But what can I do, sir?"  I asked.

"Little enough, I am afraid, lad," he replied, in a subdued, calm tone.
"But stay, if you can manage to get your hands near my teeth, I will try
and bite the bands off them, and then you can loosen the lashings round
my limbs.  We must wait for the night before we try to escape.  We
should now be seen, and pursued immediately."

I did as he bid me, and by means of his strong teeth he was soon able to
free my hands from the ropes which had confined them.  I also at length,
with much more difficulty, so far slackened all his bands and the
lashings which secured him to the litter, that he might with ease slip
his limbs completely out of them.  Having accomplished this important
undertaking, I crawled back to the spot I had before occupied.  Scarcely
had I got there, when a black lifted up his head and looked around.  I
thought he had fixed his malignant eyes on me, and had probably been a
witness of what I had done.  I lay trembling, expecting every moment to
have the wretch pounce upon me and bind my hands tighter than before.
However, after a little, he lay down again, and grunted away as before.

Soon after this another Maroon sat up and looked round, and then
another, and another; so that I was very glad I had not lost the
opportunity of which I had taken advantage.  In another quarter of an
hour, the whole force was on the move.  I looked anxiously to ascertain
whether they had discovered that the captain's bands had been loosened;
but without examining him, they lifted up the litter, and bore him on as
before.  In consequence of this I walked on much more cheerily than I
had previously done, though I still got an occasional prick to hasten my
steps.

As we advanced, we got into still more hilly and wild country.  All
signs of cultivation had ceased, and vegetation revelled in the most
extravagant profusion.  Our chief difficulty was to avoid the prickly
pears, and the cacti, and the noose-forming creepers, which extended
across our path.  We were in the advance party; the rest of the white
men followed at a distance from us, so that we had no prospect of
communicating with them.

The encouragement the captain had given me helped to raise my spirits,
and I endeavoured further to keep them up by whistling and singing
occasionally, but it was with a heavy heart that I did so.  My great
consolation was all the time that my friend Peter Poplar was not in the
same predicament.  He would have felt it more than any of us.  He had
long been prepared for any misfortune which could happen to him at sea,
but he had not made up his mind to undergo hardships on shore as well.

At last I began to grow very weary of walking so far over such rough and
uneven ground, and I was glad to find that the blacks were approaching
their encampment or village.  It consisted of a number of rude huts,
built on the summit of a high rock, with steep precipices on every side.
A narrow causeway led to it from another rock, which jutted out from
the side of the hill.  It was a very strong place, for it extended too
far into the valley to be reached by musketry from the hill; and the
hill itself was too rugged to allow cannon to be dragged up it.  The
rock appeared to have rude palisades and embankments, to serve as
fortifications, over a large portion of its upper surface.  As I
examined it, I saw that our chance of escape from such a place, by any
method I could imagine, was small indeed.  I do not know what the
captain thought about the matter, but he was not a man to be defeated by
difficulties, or to abandon hope while a spark of life remained.

As we went along the causeway, a number of women, and children, and dogs
came out to meet us, our welcome consisting in a most horrible
screaming, and crying, and barking, which, I suspect, as far as the
prisoners were concerned, was far from complimentary.  Among them were
some dreadful old crones, who came stretching out their withered, black,
parchment arms, shrieking terrifically, and abusing the white men as the
cause of all the misery and hardships it had been their lot to endure.
Their accusations were, I believe, in most respects, too just.
Certainly white men had torn them or their ancestors from their native
land--white men had brought them across the sea in the crowded
slave-ship--white men had made them slaves, treated them with severity
and cruelty, and driven them to seek for freedom from tyranny among the
wild rocks and fastnesses where they were now collected.  The other
prisoners seemed to feel, by their downcast, miserable looks, that they
were in the power of enemies whom they had justly made relentless, and
that they had no hope of escape.  The old crones went up to them,
pointed their long bony fingers in their eyes, and hissed and shrieked
in their ears.  What was said I could not understand, but they were
evidently using every insulting epithet they could imagine to exasperate
or terrify their victims.

I have often thought of that dreadful scene since.  How must the acts of
those white men have risen up before them in their true colours--the
wrong they had inflicted on young and innocent girls--the lashes
bestowed on men of free and independent natures--the abuse showered on
their heads--the total neglect of the cultivation of all their moral
attributes!  Oh, you Christian gentlemen, did it ever occur to you that
those slaves of yours were men of like passions as yourselves; that they
had minds capable of cultivation in a high degree, if not as high as
your own; that they had souls like your souls to be saved--souls which
must be summoned before the judgment-seat of Heaven, to be judged with
yours; and that you and they must there stand together before an
all-righteous and pure and just God, to receive the reward of the things
you have done in this life?  Did it occur to you that, had you made
those people true Christians; that, had you taught them the holy
religion you profess--a religion of love and forgiveness--that they
would not now be taking pleasure in tormenting you, in exhibiting the
bitter vengeance which rankled in their souls!

I could not help thinking that some such accusing thoughts as these rose
to the consciences of the planter and his companions.  I know that I
would not for worlds have changed places with him, though he was the
owner of rich fields and wealth long hoarded up, which he was on the
point of returning to England to enjoy.

Either on account of my youth, or because, as they saw, I was a sailor,
the rebels must have known that I could not have treated them cruelly,
and I was allowed to remain quiet.  After the whole population had given
vent to their feelings by abusing the prisoners in every possible way,
they were thrust into a hut together, and a guard placed over them.  The
captain and I were then put into another hut, and ordered not to stir on
pain of being shot.

"Not bery good chance of dat!" observed one of our captors, a
grey-headed old negro with a facetious countenance, looking at the
numerous lashings which confined our limbs.

"Better chance than you suppose, old fellow!" thought I to myself; but I
kept as melancholy and unconcerned a look as I could assume.

I concluded, that as the other prisoners were guarded so were we, and
that we should have very little chance of effecting our escape, unless
our guards fell asleep.  The difficulties were, at all events, very
great.  We should, in the first place, have either to scramble down the
sides of the rock, or to cross the narrow causeway, where one man as a
guard could instantly stop us.  There was every probability that the
Maroons would place one there.

For some hours there was a great deal of noise in the village.  The
blacks were rejoicing over their victory, and there was no chance of our
guards outside the hut being asleep.  I waited, therefore, without
moving, till the sounds of revelry subsided, the tom-toms were no longer
beaten, the trumpets ceased braying, and the cymbals clashing.  Then I
could hear the guards talking to each other outside.  The few words I
could comprehend out of this jargon were not very consolatory.  I made
out clearly that they proposed to shoot all their prisoners the next
day, and that, besides those already in camp, they expected a number
more from other estates which were to be attacked.  There appeared only
a possibility that our lives might be prolonged another day, till all
their forces out on various expeditions were assembled.  Little did
those at home, looking at the map of Jamaica, fancy that, in the very
centre of that beautiful island, there existed so numerous a band of
savages in open revolt against the authority of the king.

At first our guards were animated enough in their conversation; then
their voices grew thicker and thicker, and their tones more drowsy and
droning, till they could scarcely have understood what each other said.
At last one began to snore, then another, and the last speaker found
himself without auditors.  I longed for him to hold his tongue, and to
go to sleep, but talk on he would, though he had no listeners.  This, I
thought, was a good opportunity to allow me to speak to the captain, so
I crawled up to him.  He was awake, waiting for me.

"What's to be done now, captain?" said I.

"We must wait the course of events, Jack," he answered.  "I have been
turning over every plan in my mind which affords a chance of escape.  If
we were to start off now, we should certainly be caught by some of these
black gentlemen; and if brought back, we should be put under stricter
watch and ward than hitherto.  Something may occur during the night, or
perhaps to-morrow.  At all events, I do not intend to die without a
fight for it.  Try and go to sleep now, and get some rest; you'll want
it for what you may have to go through.  Go, lie down, lad; my advice is
good.  Don't fear."

I followed the captain's advice, though it was difficult to go to sleep,
and still more so not to fear.  I did go to sleep, however, and never
slept more soundly in my life.  I was awoke by feeling a hand placed on
my shoulder.  It was that of the captain.

"Jack," he whispered, "be prepared to follow me if I summon you, but not
otherwise.  If we can manage to get down the rock, or to cross the
causeway without being seen, we will go; but if not, we must wait
another opportunity.  I do not feel as if either of us had come to the
end of the cable yet, but how we are to get free I don't know."

Saying this the captain gently lifted up some of the leaves which formed
the side of the hut, and crept out.  His words and tone gave me great
encouragement.  I wished that I could have gone with him, but I knew
that I must obey him.

O how anxiously I waited his return!  Minute after minute passed away,
and still he did not come back.  I began to fear that some harm had
happened to him--that he might have fallen over the precipice in the
dark, or have been captured.  It never for a moment occurred to me that
he would desert me.  An hour or more must have passed.  Still he did not
appear.  I began to consider whether I could not creep out to search for
him.  I could have loosened from off me the ropes which bound my arms in
an instant; but I did not want to do so unless I was prepared to run
away altogether.  I have heard of people's hair turning grey in a night;
mine would, I think, have done so with anxiety had I been older.

At last the side of the hut was lifted up, and the captain crawled in,
and placed himself on the litter on which he had been brought to the
place.  "Quick, Jack," he whispered, "put the ropes round me as they
were before!  Those blacks are more wide-awake rascals than I fancied.
I have been most of the time lying down not twenty yards from the hut,
afraid to move.  I was creeping along when I saw a black fellow, with
musket on shoulder, emerge from behind a hut.  He stood for some time
looking directly at me, as if he had seen me.  He had not though; but
directly afterwards he began pacing up and down with the steadiness of
an old soldier.  I crept on when his back was turned, but never could
move far enough before he was about again, and scrutinising all the
ground before him.  The only direction in which I could move without the
certainty of being seen was towards this spot, so back again I have
come, with the hope still strong that we might find some other way of
escaping.  Once or twice I thought of springing up and killing the man;
but in so doing I should very likely have roused others, and we should
have lost any future chance of escaping."

This result of the captain's expedition put me into low spirits again,
for I fully expected that the blacks would kill us all in the morning,
and my only surprise was that they had not so done already.  I did not
say so to the captain, but he, having with his teeth secured the bands
round my arms again, I went and sat down where the blacks had first
placed me.  I did not sleep soundly again, nor did he.  I sat silent,
anxiously waiting for the morning.

I think I must have gone off into a doze, when, before daybreak, I was
roused up by a chorus of loud cries and shouts, which was soon answered
by every man, woman, and child in the village, who came rushing out of
their huts.  It was to welcome, I found, a party of their comrades from
an attack on one of the neighbouring estates, in which they had come off
the victors, with numerous prisoners and much spoil.  There began, as
before, a horrible din of tom-toms and other musical instruments, mixed
with the very far from musical voices of the old women who had been
tormenting us.  This continued till the sun rose, and then there was a
comparative silence for an hour or so.  I suppose the savages were
breakfasting.  An this time we were left in suspense as to what was to
be our fate.  We did not talk much, and, of course, did not allude to
any plan for escaping, lest we should be overheard.

At last several stout negroes entered the hut, and while some of them
lifted up the captain and carried him out, two seized me by the collar,
and dragged me after him.  I thought that they were about to throw us
over the cliffs, or to hang us or shoot us forthwith.  I could only
think of one way by which we had the slightest prospect of escaping.  It
was that the government authorities might have heard of the outbreak,
and sent troops to attack the rebels.  I did not know in those days that
those sort of gentlemen considered the art of tying up packages neatly
with red tape to be the most important of their official duties, and
that they were not apt to do anything in a hurry of so trifling
importance as attempting to save the lives of a few people!

We very soon reached a large concourse of people in an open space.  On
one side of the ground there was a steep bank, on the top of which a
chair or throne was placed, whereon sat a tall fine-looking negro,
dressed somewhat in military style, while a number of other men sat
round him.  On the level ground, on one side, was a group of some twenty
white men, among whom I recognised our companions in the defence of the
house.  They had their hands bound, and were strongly guarded by armed
negroes.  We were carried up and placed among them.  Two or three other
prisoners arrived after us, and served to increase our unhappy group.

A sort of trial was then commenced, and several Maroons stepped forward,
accusing the whites of unheard-of cruelties, and especially of being
taken with arms in our hands against the authority of the true and
proper chief of the island.  It is impossible to describe the absurd
language used, and the ceremonies gone through.  It would have been a
complete burlesque had not the matter been somewhat too serious.  As it
was, when one of the counsellors kicked another for interrupting him,
and the judge threw a calabash at their heads to call them to order, I
could not help bursting into a fit of laughter, which was soon quelled
when one of my guards gave me a progue with the tip of his spear, to
remind me where I was.  I very nearly broke out again when the one who
was hit looked up and exclaimed, "What dat for, Pompey, you scoundrel
you?--What you tink me made of, hey?"

The judge took no notice of this address, but coolly went on summing up
the evidence placed before him.  It was, I must own, clearly
condemnatory of most of the prisoners.  On the oaths of the negro
witnesses, they were proved to have committed the most atrocious acts.
Some had hung blacks for no sufficient cause, or had shot them, or had
beaten them to death, or even burned them, or had tortured them with
every refinement of cruelty.  Scarcely one present who had not given way
to passion, and barbarously ill-treated their slaves, or caused them to
submit to the greatest indignity.  At length the judge rose from his
seat.  He was a remarkably fine, tall man, and as he stretched out one
arm towards the prisoners, I could not help acknowledging that there was
much grace and dignity in his whole air and manner.  To what had been
adduced by others, he added the weight of his own testimony.

"Me prince not long ago in me own country,--me would be king now,--me
carried off--beaten--kicked--wife torn away--me piccaninnis killed--me
made to work with whip--beat, beat, beat on shoulders--me run away--
nearly starve and die.  Dose men do all dat, and much worse!  Day
deserve to die!  Shoot dem all--quick!  De earth hate dem--no stay on it
longer!"  I cannot pretend to say that these were the exact words used
by the chief, but they had a similar signification.

Immediately we were all seized, each prisoner being held by four blacks,
and marched along to an open space near the edge of the precipice.  A
firing-party of twenty blacks, which had been told off, followed us,
their horrible grins showing the intense satisfaction they felt at being
our executioners.  The judge or chief and all the rest of the people
accompanied us as spectators.  The captain was carried along on his
litter, for the negroes had conceived a very just idea of his prowess,
and kept him, as they fancied, more strongly secured than was necessary
with regard to the rest.  I stood near him waiting the result.

Things were now, indeed, looking very serious, and I could not see by
what possible means we should escape.  Still, there was so much buoyancy
in my disposition, that, even then, I did not give up all hope.  I am
afraid that I cannot say I was sustained by any higher principle.  The
thought of what death was, did, however, come over me; and I tried to
pray, to prepare myself for the world into which I saw every probability
that I was about to enter.  Still, though I wanted to pray, and wished
to go to heaven, I made but a very feeble attempt to do so.  I had been
so long unaccustomed to pray, that I could not now find the thoughts or
the words required.  My heart was not in a praying state.  I had not
sought reconciliation with God.  I did not know in what to trust,
through whom I could alone go into the presence of my Maker cleansed
from my sins, relieved from the weight of the sinful nature in which I
was born.  Of all this I remained perfectly ignorant.  I felt very
wretched, like a drowning wretch without a spar or a plank of which I
might catch hold.

I learned, however, an important lesson.  Oh! do you, who read this
notice of my life, learn it from me.  Do not suppose that the time is
_coming_ when you may begin to prepare for another world.  The time is
_come now_ with all of you.  From the period you entered this world,
from the moment the power of thought and speech was given you, the time
had arrived for you prepare for the world to come--that eternal world of
glory and joy unspeakable, or of misery, regret, and anguish.  Remember
this--note it well--don't ever let it be out of your thoughts.  You were
sent into this transient, fleeting world, for one sole object--that you
might prepare yourselves in it for the everlasting future.  Not that you
might amuse yourselves--not that you might gain wealth, and honours, and
reputation--not that you might study hard, and obtain prizes at school
or college--that you might be the leader in all manly--exercises--that
you might speak well, or sing well, or draw well, or attain excellence
in science--or that you might become rich merchants, or judges, or
generals, or admirals, or ambassadors, or, indeed, attain the head of
any professions you may choose.  These things are all lawful; it may be
your duty thus to rise, but it should not be your aim, it should not
alone be in your thoughts; you should have a far higher motive for
labouring hard, for employing your talents: that motive should be to
please God, to obey the laws and precepts of our Lord and Master.  All
should be done from love to him.  If you have not got that love for him,
pray for it, strive for it, look for guidance from above that you may
obtain it.

But, as I was saying, in those days I could not have comprehended what I
have now been speaking about.  Finding my efforts to pray almost
unavailing, I did pray for deliverance, though I waited my fate in
sullen indifference, or rather, indeed, somewhat as if I was an
unconcerned spectator of what was taking place.

The chief lifted his arm on high as a sign that the execution was to
commence.  The first person led forward was the planter whose house we
had attempted to defend.  Oh! what scorn, and loathing, and defiance
there was depicted in his countenance!  What triumph and hatred in that
of his executioners!  Should such feelings find room in the bosom of a
dying Christian?  I wot not.  Again the fatal sign was given.  The
firing-party discharged their muskets, and the planter fell a lifeless
corpse.  I tried to turn my eyes away from the scene, but they were
rivetted on the spot.



CHAPTER SIX.

A TERRIBLE EXECUTION, AND A NARROW ESCAPE.

One after the other my white companions were led out for execution.
Every moment I expected that my turn would come.  Very few showed any
great signs of fear, with the exception of the overseers, who had been
often and often the actual instruments of cruelty towards those who now
had them in their power.  I am surprised that the ignorant savage blacks
did not torture them as they had themselves been tortured, before
putting an end to their existence.  Perhaps they wished to set an
example of leniency to the civilised whites.  They went about the
execution, however, with deliberation, sufficient to make it a very
terrible affair.

They shot the planter dressed as he was taken.  When he had fallen,
numbers of the blacks rushed up, and having stripped him, they threw his
body, after inflicting numberless wounds on it, over the precipice.  As
his clothes had been injured by the bullets, they proceeded to strip the
next person of his garments, with the exception of his trousers and
shoes, which they allowed him to retain--the latter, at all events,
being of very little use to them.  He was one of the overseers, a
fierce, dark, stern man.  He looked as if he was incapable of
experiencing any of the softer sympathies of our nature.  He was
standing close to me while the planter was being shot, and not one of us
knew who would next be selected for execution.  When the men who had
taken out the overseer seized hold of him, he turned deadly pale, and
shrieked out for mercy.

"Don't kill me! don't kill me!" he exclaimed.  "I am not fit to die.  I
cannot go as I am into another world.  Oh, let me live! let me live!  I
will toil for you; I will build your cottages; I will till your fields.
Kind Africans! hear me: if I have injured anyone, I will repay him an
hundred-fold.  I'll do anything you require of me; but don't, oh, don't
kill me!"

The negro chief smiled at him scornfully, and the others who surrounded
him grinned horribly in his face.  "Hi! hi! you mark my back with hot
iron," said one, gripping him by the shoulder; "you take out de mark?"

"You kill my piccaninni!" cried another in a hissing tone in his ear.
"You gib him back, eh?  You make him smile in me face 'gain, eh?"

"You take away me young wife!" exclaimed another, in a hoarse voice,
looking him in the face.  "Where she gone to now, eh?  You give her back
good and fond as she once was--no!  You repay a hundred-fold!--you undo
the harm you have done!"

"Wretched man! go meet the Judge whose laws you have outraged; go
encounter the reproachful spirits of those who, in life, you have
irretrievably injured!  You are a blot on the world; you must be put out
of it.  You must stand before your Almighty Judge, your God.  He is a
God of mercy to those who have shown mercy.  But have you shown it?  No!
Still you must die!"

The latter expressions were, of course, not uttered by the negroes, but
something very similar was said; and amid the shouts and execrations of
the multitude, the wretched man was dragged out, and being shot down, a
hundred weapons were plunged in his yet warm and writhing body ere he
was thrown over the cliff to be food for the fowls of the air, which, in
spite of the firing, had already settled on the body of the planter,
once his superior, now his wretched equal.

The same scene was enacted with several others.  In vain they pleaded
for life, in vain they offered rewards--large bribes, freedom to some,
the means of returning to Africa to others who had been brought over.
The negroes laughed all offers to scorn.  No promises were believed: too
often had they been made and broken; too exquisitely cruel and barbarous
had been the punishments inflicted on prisoners taken in former
outbreaks, to allow them to lose the gratification of their present
revenge.

Often, as this scene has occurred to my mind, have I thought of what
would be the fate of the planters, and overseers, and other white
residents in the Slave States of the American Union, should the negroes
ever find an opportunity of revolting.  What sanguinary massacres would
take place! what havoc and destruction would be the result!  Few men
have a better right to speak on the subject than I have.  I was born
before that great country called the United States was a nation.  When I
could walk, they were part and parcel of England.  I have talked with
men who were engaged in active life before the great Washington saw the
light; who fought against the French on the heights of Abraham, under
the hero Wolfe, and aided to win one of the brightest of her jewels for
the British crown.  I, therefore, cannot help looking on the Americans
in the light of children--dear relatives; and when I address them, I
speak to them with love and affection.  I say to them, take warning from
the scene I have been describing; do not submit to the incubus of
slavery a moment longer than you can avoid it.  No sensible man expects
you to throw it off at once; but every right-feeling, right-thinking
man, does expect you to take every means and make every preparation for
its abolition, as soon as that important work can be accomplished.  The
only means you have of effecting this object with safety to yourselves,
and with justice to those beings with immortal souls now intrusted by an
inscrutable decree of Providence to your care, is by educating them, by
making them Christians, by preparing them for liberty, by setting them
an example which they may hereafter follow.  Teach them to depend on
their own exertions for support--to govern themselves--raise them in the
scale of humanity: treat them as men should men, and not as Christians
so-called treat the hapless sons of Africa.  Remember that the British
West India Islands were brought to the verge of ruin, and numberless
families depending on them were ruined, not because the slaves were made
free, but because they were not properly prepared for freedom.  Whose
fault was that?  Not that of the British Government, not that of the
nation; but of the planters themselves, of the white inhabitants of the
island.  They refused to the last to take any steps to Christianise, to
educate, to raise the moral character of the negroes; and of course the
negroes, when no longer under restraint, revelled in the barbarism in
which they had been allowed to remain, with all the vices consequent on
slavery superadded.

Should these remarks be read by any citizens of the American Slave
States, I trust that they will remember what Old Jack says to them.  He
has reason to wish them well, to love them, for he has received much
kindness at the hands of many of their fellow-countrymen; and he repeats
that they have the power in their own hands to remove for ever from off
them the stigma which now attaches to their name.  He does not urge them
to do it in consequence of any pressure from without--not at the beck
and call of foreigners, but from their own sense of justice; because
they are convinced that they are doing their duty to God and man; and
lastly, that they will be much better served by educated, responsible
freemen, than by slaves groaning in bondage, and working only from
compulsion.  [See Note.]

But avast!  I cry.  I have been driving a long way from the scene I was
describing.  The negroes I have been mentioning were men who had been
slaves, and had made themselves free, and we see the way they treated
the whites whom they had got into their power.  They were, it must be
granted, savages, barbarians, heathens.  Their people, who had been
captured as rebels, had been treated by their white Christian conquerors
with every refinement of cruelty which the malice of man could invent:
they had been slain with the most agonising tortures; and yet these
savages, disdaining such an example, merely shot their prisoners,
killing them without inflicting an unnecessary pang.  I cannot say that
at the time, however, I thought that they were otherwise than a most
barbarous set.

One after the other my companions were led out and shot, and treated as
their predecessors.  One, a sturdy Englishman, who had not been long in
the country, it seemed, broke loose, and knocked down several of his
guards.  He fought long and bravely with them.  Had he been able to get
hold of a weapon, he would, I believe, have cut his way out from among
them.  As it was, his fists served him in good stead; and he had already
very nearly cleared himself a path, when a shot from pistol struck him
on the knee, and brought him to the ground.  Still he struggled bravely;
but the negroes, throwing themselves on him, completely overpowered him,
and he was at once dragged up to the place of execution.  Before he had
time to look around, or to offer up a prayer to Heaven, a dozen bullets
had pierced his body, and he who was but lately so full of life and
strength was a pallid corpse!  I scarcely like to describe the dreadful
scene.  Even now I often shudder as I think of it.  I have seen men shot
down in battle--I have beheld numbers struggling in the raging sea,
which was about to prove their grave; but I never saw men in full health
and strength waiting for their coming death without the means of
struggling for life--I have never seen men deprived of life in so cool
and deliberate a way--I have never so surely expected to be deprived
myself of life.

Our numbers had now been dreadfully thinned; the captain, and I, and
three others only remained alive.  One of those had become a raving
maniac, his mind had given way under the horror of death; but now he
feared nothing; he laughed the murderers to scorn; with shouts of
derision on his lips he was shot down.  The next man was seized: calmly
he walked to the spot, and he likewise fell.  Will it be the captain
next, or I, or the only other remaining prisoner?  The latter was
seized: he looked up to the bright blue sky; to the green woods, waving
with rich tropical luxuriance of foliage; to the dark faces of the
surrounding multitude; and then at us two, his companions in misfortune;
and I shall never forget the look of anguish and terror I saw there
depicted.  He saw no help, no chance of escape; in another instant he
also was numbered with the dead.  Then, indeed, my heart sank within me,
for I expected to be like those who were to mortal eyes mere clods of
earth.  But instead of seizing me, they approached the captain.  Before,
however, they could lay their hands on him, his bonds seemed as if by
superhuman strength to be torn asunder, and up he sprung to do battle
for life!  The negroes literally sprung back as they saw him with
amazement, and on he bounded towards their chief.  No one tried to stop
him, and in another instant he had thrown his powerful well-knit limbs
so completely around him, that the negro, tall and strong as he was, was
entirely unable to help himself.

While this scene was enacting I remember seeing another tall negro with
a few followers coming along the causeway.  When I saw what the captain
had done, remembering also that my bonds could be easily slackened, I
cast them off, and sprang after him; and so sudden were my movements,
that before any of the astonished blacks could stop me, I had clung to
the legs of the black chief as tightly as I ever clung to a
top-gallant-yard in a gale of wind.  The chief and his followers were so
much taken by surprise, that no one knew what to say or how to act.  The
awe with which the captain had inspired them, and the supernatural mode,
as it seemed, by which he had freed himself from his bonds, and freed me
also, made them afraid of approaching lest he should destroy them or the
chief.

The captain saw his advantage, and was not a man to lose it.  His life
depended on his resolution.  The horror he must have felt at the scene
just enacted made him resolve not to throw a chance away.  As he held
the chief in his vice-like grasp, with his arms pinioned down, he looked
him fully in the face and laughed long and loudly.

"You thought to kill me, did you?" he exclaimed--"you thought that you
could deprive me of life as easily as you did those miserable men you
have just destroyed--me, a man who never injured you or yours; who has
never wronged one of the sons of Africa.  Ay, I can say that with a
clear conscience.  Often have I benefited them, often have I saved them
from injury; and perhaps even here there are some who know me, and know
that I speak the truth."

"One is here who can prove all he says to be true," exclaimed a tall
negro, stepping forward from among the crowd.  He was the very man I had
remarked approaching the spot along the causeway.

"My friends, hear me," he exclaimed.  "We have already satisfied our
just vengeance, and do not let us destroy the innocent with the guilty.
Some years ago a ship from Africa, laden with the children of her
fruitful soil torn cruelly from their homes, struck on a coral-reef.  A
heavy sea dashed over the devoted vessel.  Land was in sight, but yet
far-off, blue and indistinct.  The white crew had many boats.  They
launched them and pulled away with heartless indifference, leaving three
hundred human beings, men, women, and helpless children, to almost
certain destruction.  Night came on.  Oh, what a night of horrors!  Many
died, some from terror; many were drowned, manacled as they lay in the
noisome hold.  When the morning broke a sail appeared in sight.  She
approached the spot.  Some of the negroes who had broken loose made
signs to notify that human beings were still alive on board.  The storm
had much abated; a boat was lowered and came close to the wreck.  When
they saw that no white men were on board, did they pull away and leave
us to our fate?  No; they hailed us as fellow-creatures, and told us to
calm our alarms, and that they would do their best to save us.  I was
there--a slave--I who had been a chief in my own country!  I asked how
many the boat would hold, and as many, about a dozen, I allowed to enter
her at a time.  Another boat from the ship soon came to our assistance,
and one remained uninjured on board the wreck.  We launched her, and
many of the Africans being able to paddle, helped to carry her people to
the ship.  Thus all who remained alive on board the wreck were saved.
The ship sailed from the spot and approached the land.  I asked the
brave captain how he would dispose of us.  Some of the people believed
that he would carry us into a port, and there sell us as slaves.  He
looked at me hard.  `I am no slave-dealer,' he exclaimed.  `Men have
called me what they deem worse, but that matters not.  I should obtain a
large price for you all, and steep my soul in as black a sin as ever
stained our human nature.  No; I will land you on yonder coast, far from
the habitations of men.  There fruit, and roots, and numberless
productions of kind Nature will amply supply you with food.  There you
may be free.  I cannot take you back to your own country.  I have no
other means of helping you.'  The generous captain was as good as his
word--we were landed in safety ere the sun set; and more than that, he
supplied us with such food as he could spare to strengthen us for our
journey inland to the spot he advised us to seek, where we might remain
in safety.  Yes, my friends; there is the man who did this noble deed--
there is the man whom you were, in your blindness, about so cruelly to
slay!"

While the stranger was speaking, I recognised in him the tall negro who
had come on board the brig, on my first voyage, with the mysterious old
man, whom I supposed to be Captain Ralph.  As soon as he stepped forward
I felt almost certain that our lives would be spared; but still I did
not let go the chief's legs.  He did not often get them so thoroughly
pinched, I suspect.

"I have yet more to tell you," continued the tall negro.  "The noble
deed which that brave man had done was discovered by some of his white
countrymen, and he was persecuted by them, and compelled to fly for his
life, and for long to become a wanderer over the face of the ocean.
They drove him to take to a course of life which they themselves
condemned; and had they captured him, they would have made it plea for
his destruction."

The harangue which the negro made was even longer than I have given, and
the language was perhaps somewhat more suited to the comprehension of
his hearers.  The effect, at all events, was most satisfactory.
Enthusiastic shouts of applause burst from every side; and the chief, in
words and by looks not to be mistaken, assured the captain that both his
and my life would be preserved, and only begged that he would have the
goodness not to squeeze him so tightly.

On this the captain released him, and the negroes rushing forward,
lifted him up on their shoulders, and bore him in triumph round their
village.  The boys, not to be outdone by their elders, got hold of me as
soon as I had let go the chief's legs, and lifting me up in the same
way, followed the captain.  Tom-toms were beat, and horns sounded, and
cymbals were clashed, and men, and women, and children shrieked and
shouted at the top of their voices, and never was heard a wilder outcry
and hubbub than that with which we were welcomed as we passed through
the rebel village.  It was far pleasanter than being shot, I thought.
The truth is, that so great and sudden was the change in our position,
that I could scarcely collect my ideas and convince myself of its
reality.  Everything seemed like a dream, both past and present.  Still
I felt that my life was spared.  I tried to be serious, and to be
thankful for the mercy shown me; but I am conscious that I succeeded
very ill, and allowed my mind to be entirely occupied with the scene
going forward before my eyes.

While we were being thus paraded about the village, the women were
engaged in preparing a feast, of which we were invited to partake; and I
know that, however excited had been my feelings, I had not lost my
appetite.

"Captain," said I, holding the leg of a roasted monkey in my fist, while
he was munching away at a stewed snake, or lizard, or some creeping
thing or other, "this is pleasanter than feeding the crows down below
there.  I want, sir, to beg the chief's pardon for pinching his legs so
tight.  I hope that he was not offended."  I spoke in a very different
tone to that in which I had ever before addressed my captain.  The truth
was, I felt and acted almost as if I were tipsy.

The captain looked at me somewhat sternly.  "Be more serious, Jack," he
answered; "we should be thankful to Heaven that we are not as those
unhappy men are.  We have both been mercifully preserved.  Restrain your
feelings, lad; you'll have much to go through before you are out of the
fire."

I do not remember much more about the feast.  The negroes ate, and
drank, and laughed, and then got up and danced and sang as merrily as if
they had not just been the principal actors in a terrific tragedy.
Before the feast was over, our old acquaintance the tall negro came up
to the captain, and sat himself down by his side.

"Prepare to leave this at a moment's notice," said he in a low tone of
voice.  "These people's tempers may change again as rapidly against you
as they have lately turned in your favour.  They believed what I told
them of your generosity; but as there is no one here to corroborate the
account, they might as easily be taught to discredit it."

"Thanks, my friend," answered the captain, grasping the negro's hand.
"Thanks, Michael; you have indeed repaid any debt you might have thought
you owed me.  I'll follow your advice, and shall be ready to start
whenever you give the sign."

"Directly it is dark, then, we must away, you and your young follower
there," answered the tall negro, whom the captain addressed as Michael.
"I have another reason for wishing to be off.  This work they have been
about will certainly bring the military up here; and though they might
hold the place against an army if they knew how, none of them can be
depended on.  Now, if you remain here, our friends would expect you to
fight for them; and if you were captured by the white men, you would to
a certainty be treated as a rebel."

"Your arguments are quite strong enough, Michael, to make me wish to be
off," answered the captain, laughing.  I did not hear the remainder of
the conversation.

The young negroes who had carried me about on their shoulders continued
to treat me very kindly, and brought me all sorts of things to eat, till
really I could not stuff in a mouthful more.  They were much amused by
examining my hands, and face, and clothes, for many of them till that
day had never seen a white boy.  They had been born up in the
mountainous district, where we then were, and where no white person had
ever ventured to come.

At last the negro Michael called the captain and me, and in the hearing
of the people, pointing to a hut, told us that it was to be our home.
The whole population having had plenty of work for the last few days,
retired to their huts, and left us in quiet.  As may be supposed,
neither the captain nor I ventured to sleep, though, for my part, I
would very gladly have done so.  We waited for some time with no little
anxiety.  It was at last relieved by the appearance of Michael.

"Come," he whispered, "follow me.  I could only ask seamen to take the
path by which I must lead you."  He glided out, and we stepped after
him.

There was no moon, but the stars shone forth brightly, and gave us
sufficient light to see what was near at hand.  Michael led the way
close to the spot where our companions had been murdered in the morning.
On a sudden he disappeared, and I thought that he had fallen over the
precipice.  A pang shot through me.  But no, he had merely begun to
descend by a narrow path cut in the rock.  It was indeed both narrow and
steep.  Sometimes we had to drop down several feet to a ledge below.
There were probably holes in the rock by which people might ascend, but
it was too dark to see them.  Often we had to press along with our
breasts to the precipice, holding on to its rugged sides, and with our
backs over a yawning gulf.  I would rather, however, have been on the
topsail-yard-arm in the heaviest gale that ever blew: with a good honest
rope in my hand, than where I then was.  But darkness prevented our
seeing half its terrors.  More than once I thought that I should have
gone over; but the captain, whose steps I closely followed, supported me
with his powerful arm, and brought me along in safety.  He did not utter
a word, and his breath often came fast, as if he was undergoing great
physical exertion, and was well aware of our perilous position.  I know
that my knees trembled beneath me when Michael told us that we had
reached the bottom.

"We have gained some miles by this path towards the sea," said he, "and
escaped the risk of being observed.  Few even of the people up there
know the path, and fewer still would venture to descend by it.  Now, let
us on; we have many miles to go before morning."

I need not describe our night's journey.  For several hours we walked,
and often ran on, without stopping even a moment to rest.  It is
extraordinary what people can do when they are pressed by circumstances.

We had not accomplished many miles when the moon arose, and shed her
light over the strangely wild and beautiful scene, her beams glancing
through the tall trees and the numberless creepers which decked their
branches.  Suddenly Michael stopped, and then pressing us back without
speaking, conducted us into a thicket composed of prickly pear, cacti,
and other strangely-shaped shrubs.  Scarcely had he done so when the
tramp of men and the sound of horses' feet were heard coming through a
rocky defile ahead of us, and soon afterwards a body of cavalry passed
along, their helmets and shining arms playing in the moonbeams.  They
were immediately followed by a regiment of infantry, less showy but more
useful in the style of warfare in which they were likely to engage.  It
would scarcely be believed, at the present day, that several troops of
dragoons were stationed at that time at Kingston, to do what it would be
difficult to say, as they were totally unfit for mountain warfare, and
would scarcely have been of much use to repel invasion.  We remained
silent and concealed as they passed.  I concluded that Michael or the
captain had good reasons not to wish to encounter them.  They were
going, of course, to attack the rebels; but I understood afterwards that
they obtained but a very slight success, and had to return without in
any way contributing to put a stop to the outbreak.  That was not done
till some time afterwards, when, by a general amnesty, and a guarantee
being given for their safety, the Maroons were induced to break up their
confederacy, and return within the pale of civilisation.

When daylight came we concealed ourselves in a thick wood, where I could
not help feeling terribly alarmed lest some snake or other noxious
reptile should injure us while we slept; but Michael assured me that I
need not fear, and that he would watch that no harm should happen to us.
Thus for three nights and a portion of one day we travelled on, till
once more the bright blue waters of the ocean gladdened our sight.  From
a hill we climbed we looked down into a sheltered bay, and there lay
calmly at anchor a schooner, which we recognised as the one which had
been sent away from the brig under command of Mr Gale.

We were not long in descending the hill, and hailing her from the shore.
Here Michael parted from us, under the plea that he had business which
would detain him longer in that part of the island.  The schooner's boat
took us off, and we were soon on board.  Mr Gale had heard rumours of
the attack on the planter's house, and that every one had been murdered,
and he was truly glad to see his captain safe; while my kind friend
Peter assured me that he was not a little pleased to find that I had not
lost the number of my mess.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note.  The above was written before the late American Civil War, which
emancipated the slaves of the Southern States.



CHAPTER SEVEN.

A PIRATE STRONGHOLD.

The little schooner very soon got her cargo on board, and we 

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