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The Cruise of the Midge (Vol. 1 of 2)

by Michael Scott · English · Gutenberg #44875 · 602,020 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Cruise of the Midge (Vol. 1 of 2)

Author: Michael Scott


        
Release date: February 12, 2014 [eBook #44875]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRUISE OF THE MIDGE (VOL. 1 OF 2) ***

THE CRUISE OF THE MIDGE.


BY THE

AUTHOR OF "TOM CRINGLE'S LOG."

[Transcriber's note: Author is Michael Scott]



  "ON LIFE'S VAST OCEAN DIVERSELY WE SAIL,
  REASON THE CARD, BUT PASSION IS THE GALE."
                              ESSAY ON MAN



IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. I.



  WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH;
  AND T. CADELL, STRAND, LONDON.
  MDCCCXXXVI.




EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND CO., PAUL'S WORK.




  CONTENTS OF VOLUME FIRST.


  CHAP.

  I.  GAZELLES AND MIDGES--THE MIDGE'S WINGS ARE SINGED
  II.  THE ATTACK
  III.  THE MIDGE IN THE HORNET'S NEST
  IV.  THE EVENING AFTER THE BRUSH
  V.  AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SERJEANT QUACCO
  VI.  THE FETISH--CROSSING THE BAR, AND DESTRUCTION OF THE SLAVER
  VII.  A WARM RECEPTION
  VIII.  CAPE MISSIONARIES
  IX.  FOUNDERING OF THE HERMES
  X.  DICKY PHANTOM--YARN SPINNING
  XI.  JAMBE DE BOIS
  XII.  GAMBLING--AN UNLUCKY HIT




THE CRUISE OF THE MIDGE.




CHAPTER I.

GAZELLES AND MIDGES--THE MIDGE'S WINGS ARE SINGED.

Born an Irishman, the son of an Irishwoman; educated in Scotland, the
country of my father, an ancient mariner, who, as master and
supercargo, had sailed his own ship for many years in the Virginia
trade; removed to England at the age of seventeen, in consequence of
his death; I had, by the time I arrived at majority, passed four years
of my mercantile apprenticeship in my paternal uncle's counting-house,
an extensive merchant in that modern Tyre, the enterprising town of
Liverpool; during which period, young as I was, I had already made four
voyages in different vessels of his to foreign parts--to the West
Indies, the Brazils, the Costa Firme, and the United States of America.

Being naturally a rambling, harumscarum sort of a young chap, this sort
of life jumped better with my disposition than being perched on the top
of a tall mahogany tripod, poring over invoices, daybooks, journals,
and ledgers, with the shining ebony-coloured desk jammed into the pit
of my stomach below, and its arbour of bright brass rods constantly
perverting the integrity of my curls above; so at the period when the
scene opens, I had with much ado prevailed on my uncle to let me
proceed once more on a cruise, instead of a senior clerk, in charge of
two of his ships, bound to the African coast, to trade for ivory and
gold dust, and to fill up with palm oil and hardwood timbers.

I had no small difficulty in carrying this point, as the extreme
insalubrity of the climate, the chance of being plundered by the
semi-piratical foreign slavers, to say nothing of the danger of a
treacherous attack on the part of the natives themselves, weighed
heavily against my going in my worthy uncle's mind; but I had set my
heart on it, and where "there's a will, there's a way."

I will not conceal, however, that after all, when it came to the point,
I do not believe he would have allowed me to depart, had it not been
for a prank of mine, which put him into a towering passion with me
about this time.

On the occasion of a rejoicing for one of our great victories, being
hand-and-glove with all the skippers and mates of the vessels belonging
to the concern, I smuggled up to our house on Everton Terrace, unknown
to my uncle, two boat guns, six-pounder carronades, and a lot of
fire-works, by bribing the brewer's man to carry them for me in his
cart.  Having achieved this part of my plan, with the aid of two young
tars, I contrived to mount the guns in the summer-house, immediately
beneath the dining-room window; and having loaded them, I set fire to
slow matches, fitted to the touch-holes, just as the dinner bell rang;
and then calmly took my place at table, facing mine uncle.

The old gentleman was rather a quiet-going codger, and during meals
seldom annoyed his neighbours with too much conversation--in the
present case, he had eaten his soup, his bit of fish, and was just
raising his first glass of wine to his lips--when bang went one of my
carronades, and smash fell the glass--the madeira flowing all down his
lap.  He had not recovered his equanimity, when bang went gun No. 2,
and up shot a whole constellation of rockets and Roman candles, from
the garden, whereat he fairly sprang off his chair, as if the explosion
had taken place in the cushion of it, or he had been hoisted out of his
socket by some sort of catamaran.

His first impulse was to run to the open window; whiz! a _live_ rocket,
or large squib, I forget which, flew in over his shoulder, and nearly
popped down the throat of the old serving-man, who stood like a statue
open mouthed before the sideboard, petrified with astonishment; as it
was, it scorched the powdered curl over his left ear, missing his head
by a mere hair's breadth.

The guns I could account for, but the erratic course of this missile
surprised me exceedingly.  At one fell swoop, it had cleared the
sideboard of glasses, decanters, silver waiters, and the sinumbra lamp;
driven my revered uncle to the top of the table for refuge; and then,
as if still unsatisfied with all this mischief, it began to jump about
under it, blazing and hissing like a fiery serpent, first in this
corner, then under that chair; while old Peregrine, the waiting-man
(whose ice had at length thawed), and I were dancing after it; knocking
our heads together, and breaking our shins against chairs and the edges
of the table, making glasses and decanters ring again, in a vain
endeavour to seize hold of the stick.  The row soon brought up the
other servants, groom, cook, housemaid, &c. &c. &c., towards whom, as
if possessed with some spirit of mischief, it fizzed through the door,
in its transit, nearly taking one of the female domestics in reverse,
whereat they all began to scream as if they had been murdered; then up
stairs it rattled, as if desirous of visiting the drawing-room floor,
poking its snout into every cranny, hissing and wriggling its tail, and
putting the entire array to flight with its vagaries.  It was too
absurd to see a whole household of grown people thus chasing a live
sky-rocket like so many children--"up stairs, down stairs, and in my
lady's chamber"--so presently we were all, excepting the rocket itself,
brought to a stand still, by fits of laughter.

Although it was clear the heroic firework was not to be captured alive,
yet, at length, like the vapouring of a passionate man, it spluttered
itself out, and was captured, stick and all, by the old cook, whose
propriety it had invaded; and I returned to the dining-room.

My uncle had by this time reseated himself at the table, looking as
black as thunder, with old Peregrine planted once more behind his
chair, as stiff as if he had literally swallowed the rocketstick.  I
sat down, feeling not a little awkward; the dead silence becoming every
moment more and more irksome.  The old gentleman seemed to suffer under
this, as well as myself, and to have come to the conclusion that it
would be more sociable, even to break out into a regular scold, than
hold his tongue any longer.

"So, Master Benjamin, a new piece of practical wit of yours, I presume."

"Indeed, my dear sir, I am very sorry--the guns I plead guilty to; but
who can have fired the rockets?"

"Ah--as if you did not know"--quoth uncle Peter.

"Indeed, uncle, I do not, unless the fusees have caught from the
wadding of these cursed guns;" which, in fact, was the case--"I am sure
I wish they had been at the bottom of the Mersey since they have made
you angry, uncle."

There was another awful pause--during which, in came a message from Mr
Pigwell, one of the neighbours, to ask if any accident had
occurred---"No no," said uncle Peter testily--"no accident, only a
small mistake."

Another dead lull--presently the old servant, who had gone to the lobby
to deliver the message, returned into the room, and as he placed a
fresh bottle of wine on the table, he said--"The man says Mrs Pigwell
has got a sad fright, sir--taken in labour, sir."

"There, Master Benjamin, there--I am sure I wish you had gone to the
coast of Africa before this had happened--I was an old soft hearted
fool to stand in the way."

"Well, my dear uncle, it is not too late yet"--said I, a good deal
piqued.  Not a word from him--"I am sorry to see you have taken such
offence where none was meant.  It was a piece of folly, I admit, and I
am sincerely sorry for it."  Still silent--"Jennings is still at anchor
down below--I can easily be ready to-morrow, and there is no appearance
of the wind changing--so, pray, do let me go."

"You may go to the devil, sir, for me"--and off he started, fizzing,
worse than the rocket itself, with rage to his dressing-room, where he
often used to pass an hour or two in the evenings alone.

I sat still, guzzling my wine in great wrath.--Enter Peregrine again.
I was always a favourite with the old fellow, although he had been
seriously angry at first, when he saw that my absurd prank had put his
old master so cruelly out.  Now, however, I perceived he was anxious to
make up for it.

"Lord, Master Benjamin, your uncle is in such a taking you never
se'ed--why, do you know, the first thing he did when he went to his
dressing-room was to hang his wig on the lighted candle, instead of the
pillar of the looking glass; and then we were all in darkness, you
see--so, in groping my way out, I popped my foot into the hot water in
the foot-pail that he had ordered up, and this scalded me so, that,
forgetting where I was, I could not help swearing a bit, Master
Benjamin;--on which he opened the door, and thrust me out, neck and
crop, calling me a blasphemous old villain--although we all know he is
not slack at a good rousing oath himself when his bristles are up; but
to call me an old blasphemer--_me!_ who have sarved him faithfully for
thirty years, in various parts of the world--a blasphemous old villain,
indeed!"

I saw no more of my uncle that night, and when we met next morning at
breakfast, I was rejoiced to find the gale had blown itself out.

When I sat down, he looked across the table at me, as if expecting me
to speak, but as I held my peace, the good old man opened the
conference himself.

"Why, Benjie, my boy, I have been laughing over our fright, yesterday;
but have done with your jokes, Master, if you please, and no more about
that infernal coast of"----

"Mr Pigwell has just called, sir," quoth old Peregrine, entering at
this moment--"and desires me to say that Mrs Pigwell is brought to bed,
sir, and _all_ doing well, sir, notwithstanding the fright."

"Glad of it, Peregrine--my compliments--wish him joy--but _all_, what
do you mean by _all_?"

"She has got twins, sir."

"The deuce! twins!"

"Yes, sir, _three_ on 'em, sir."

"An Irish pair," said I.

"Two girls and a boy."

"Hillo," I continued--"why, I only fired _two_ guns!"

"Oh, pilgarlic goes for the rocket," cried my uncle, laughing--"but
_there_ spoke your mother, you Patlander, you--_there_ shone out
Kilkenny, Benjie.  Oh dear, oh dear--two girls and a boy--old Pigwell's
young wife brought to bed of--two carronades and a rocket--ha, ha, ha."

We walked down to the counting-house together as lovingly as ever, but
my star was now in the ascendant, for there we found Captain Jennings,
who informed my uncle that he had been obliged that morning to land Mr
Williamson, the clerk, who was about proceeding in charge of the
expedition, in consequence of his having been taken alarmingly ill.

This was most unfortunate, as the wind appeared on the eve of coming
fair.

"We shall have a breeze before next flood, that will take us right
round the Head--I hope you won't detain us in the river, sir?" quoth
Jennings.

My uncle was puzzled what to do, as it so happened that none of the
other youngsters at the moment in the employ had ever been away in such
a capacity before; so I availed myself of the opportunity to push my
request home, and it was finally fixed that forenoon that I should take
Mr Williamson's place.

A very old friend of my deceased father's, Sir Oliver Oakplank, was at
this time the senior officer on the African coast, and as the time was
approaching when, according to the usual routine of that service, he
would be departing on the round voyage for Jamaica and Havanna, before
proceeding to England to refit, it was determined, if I could arrange
the lading of our ships in time, that I should take a passage with him,
for the twofold object of seeing an uncle, by my mother's side, who was
settled in Jamaica, and from whom I had expectations; and making
certain speculations in colonial produce at Havanna.

As I had the credit of being a sharpish sort of a shaver, and by no
means indiscreet, although fond of fun, I had much greater license
allowed me in my written instructions than my uncle was in the habit of
conceding to any of my fellow quill-drivers, who had been previously
despatched on similar missions.  I had in fact a roving commission as
to my operations generally.  The very evening on which I got leave to
go, the ship rounded the Rock Perch, and nothing particular occurred
until we arrived at the scene of our trading.  I very soon found that
neither the dangers nor difficulties of the expedition had been
exaggerated; on the contrary, the reality of both very far exceeded
what I had made up my mind to expect.  First of all, I lost more than a
half of both crews in the course of two months, and the master of one
of the ships amongst them; secondly, I was plundered and ill-used by a
villanous Spanish slaving polacre, who attacked us without rhyme or
reason while lying quietly at anchor pursuing our trade in the Bonny
river.  Not dreaming of any danger of this kind, except from the
natives, we allowed the Dons to come on board before we offered any
resistance, and then it was too late to do so effectually; however, at
the eleventh hour, we did show some fight, whereby I got my left cheek
pierced with a boarding pike or boat-hook, which I repaid by a slashing
blow with a cutlass, that considerably damaged the outward man of the
Don who had wounded me.  I verily believe we should have all been put
to death in consequence, had it not been for the Spanish captain
himself, who, reminding the villains that it was not fighting but
_plunder_ they had come for, made them knock off from cracking our
crowns, and betake themselves to searching for dollars, and boxing us
all up in the round house until they had loaded themselves with every
thing they chose to take away.  However, notwithstanding this mishap, I
finally brought my part of the operation to a successful issue, by
completing the loading of the ships, and seeing them fairly off for
England within the time originally contemplated.  I then joined the
commodore at Cape Coast, where I met with a most cordial reception from
him, and also from my cousin, Dick Lanyard, one of his lieutenants.

Through the kind offices of this youngster, I soon became as good as
one of the Gazelles; indeed, notwithstanding I was the commodore's
guest, I was more in the gun-room than any where else; and although not
quite _selon les regles_, I contrived, during the time the frigate
remained on the coast after I joined her, to get away now and then in
the boats, my two months' experience in the rivers having rendered me
an accomplished pilot; and being in no way afraid of the climate, I
thus contrived to make one in any spree where there was likely to be
fun going, even more frequently than my turn of duty would have
entitled me to, had I been really an officer of the ship.

Unless there be something uncongenial or positively repulsive about
one, a person in my situation, with a jovial hearty turn, and a little
money in his pockets to add a streak of comfort to a mess now and then,
becomes to a certainty a mighty favourite with all the warrant and
petty officers, boatswain's mates, old quartermasters, _et hoc genus
omne_; and I flatter myself that had I gone overboard, or been killed
in any of the skirmishes that, with the recklessness of boyhood, I had
shoved my nose into, there would have been as general a moan made for
me along the 'tween decks, as for the untimely demise of poor Dicky
Phantom, the monkey.

My friend, the aforesaid Dick, had been for six months fourth
lieutenant of H.M.S. Gazelle, on board of which, as already mentioned,
Sir Oliver Oakplank had his broad pennant[1] hoisted, as the
commander-in-chief on the African station.


[1] A broad red swallow-tailed flag, carried at the main-royal
masthead, indicative of the rank of commodore.


The last time they had touched at Cape Coast they took in a Spanish
felucca, that had been previously cut out of the Bonny river, with part
of her cargo of slaves on board.

She had cost them a hard tussle, and several of the people had fallen
by the sword in the attack, but more afterwards from dysentery and
marsh fever, the seeds of which had doubtless been sown in the
pestilential estuary at the time of the attack; although there is no
disputing that they were much more virulently developed afterwards than
they would otherwise have been, by a week's exposure in open boats to
the deleterious changes of the atmosphere.  The excellent commodore,
therefore, the father of his crew, seeing the undeniable necessity of
lessening the exposure of the men in such a villanous climate,
instantly wrote home to the Admiralty, requesting that half-a-dozen
small vessels might be sent to him, of an easy draught of water, so
that they might take charge of the boats, and afford a comfortable
shelter to their crews; at the same time that they should be able to
get over the bars, without damage, of the various African rivers, where
the contraband Guineamen were in the habit of lurking.  To evince that
he practised what he preached, he instantly fitted out the captured
felucca on his own responsibility, manned her with five-and-twenty men,
and gave the command of her to the third lieutenant.

She had been despatched about a fortnight before in the direction of
Fernando Po, and we had stood in on the morning of the day on which my
narrative commences, to make cape Formosa, which was the rendezvous
fixed on between us.  About three o'clock, P.M., when we were within
ten miles of the cape, without any appearance of the tender, we fell in
with a Liverpool trader, bound to the Brass river to load palm oil and
sandalwood.  She reported that the night before they had come across a
Spaniard, who fired into them, when they sheered-to with an intent to
speak him.  The master said that, when first seen, the strange sail was
standing right in for the river ahead of us; and, from the noises he
heard, he was sure he had negroes on board.  It was therefore
conjectured that she was one of the vessels who had taken in part of
her cargo of slaves at the Bonny river, and was now bound for the Nun
or Brass river to complete it.  They were, if any thing, more confirmed
in this, by the circumstance of his keeping away and standing to the
south-west the moment he found they were hauling in for the land, as if
anxious to mislead them, by inducing a belief that he was off for the
West Indies or Brazil.  This was the essence of the information
received from the Liverpool-man; but from the description of the Don,
taking also into account the _whereabouts_ he was fallen in with, I had
no doubt in my own mind of his being the very identical villain who had
plundered me.  The same afternoon we fell in with an American, who
rejoiced our hearts by saying that he had been chased by a vessel in
the forenoon answering the description of the felucca.  Immediately
after we hove about, and stood out to sea again, making sail in the
direction indicated.  In consequence of our overhauling this vessel,
the commodore had put off his dinner for an hour; and when all the
ropes had been coiled down, and every thing made snug after tacking, he
resumed his walk on the weatherside of the quarterdeck, in company with
Mr David Sprawl, the first lieutenant.

The commodore was a red-faced little man, with a very irritable cast of
countenance, which, however, was by no means a true index to his warm
heart, for I verily believe that no commander was ever more beloved by
officers and men than he was.  He had seen a great deal of service, and
had been several times wounded; once, in particular, very badly by a
grapeshot, that had shattered his left thigh, and considerably
shortened it, thereby giving him a kick in his gallop, as he himself
used to phrase it, until the day of his death.  He was a wag in his
way, and the officer now perambulating the deck alongside of him was an
unfailing source of mirth; although the commodore never passed the
limits of strict naval etiquette, or the bounds of perfect good
breeding in his fun.  The gallant old fellow was dressed in faded
nankeen trowsers--discoloured cotton stockings--shoes, with corn-holes
cut in the toes--an ill-washed and _rumpled_ white Marseilles
waistcoat--an old blue uniform coat, worn absolutely threadbare, and
white and soapy at the seams and elbows; each shoulder being garnished
with a faded gold lace strap, to confine the epaulets when mounted, and
that was only on a Sunday.  His silk neckcloth had been most probably
black _once_, but now it was a dingy brown; and he wore a most shocking
bad hat--an old white beaver, with very broad brims, the snout of it
fastened back to the crown with a lanyard of common spunyarn; buttoned
up, as it were, like the _chapeaux_ in Charles the Second's time, to
prevent it flapping down over his eyes.  He walked backwards and
forwards very quickly, taking two steps for Sprawl's one, and whenever
he turned he gave a loud stamp, and swung briskly about on the good leg
as if it had been a pivot, giving a most curious indescribable flourish
in the air with the wounded limb in the round-coming, like the last
quiver of Noblet's leg in an expiring pirouette.

Lieutenant Sprawl, the officer with whom he was walking and keeping up
an animated conversation, was also in no small degree remarkable in his
externals, but in a totally different line.  He was a tall man, at the
very least six feet high, and stout in proportion; very
square-shouldered; but, large as he was, his coat seemed to have been
made to fit even a stouter person, for the shoulder-straps (I think
that is the name) projected considerably beyond his shoulders, like the
projecting eaves of a Swiss cottage, thus giving the upper part of his
figure a sharp ungainly appearance.  Below these wide-spreading
upperworks he tapered away to nothing at the loins, and over the hips
he was not the girth of a growing lad.  His thighs were very short, but
his legs, from the knee down, were the longest I ever saw in man,
reversing all one's notions of proportion or symmetry, for they
gradually swelled out from the knee, until they ended in the ankle,
which emulated, if it did not altogether surpass, the calf in diameter.
When you looked at him in a front view, his lower spars, from the knee
down, were a facsimile of the letter V reversed; that is, with the apex
uppermost, while the long splay feet formed the strokes across at the
bottom, into which the shanks or shin-bones were morticed amidships as
nearly as may be, so that the heel projected aft very nearly as far as
the toe did forward, as if he had been built after the model of an
Indian proa, to sail backwards or forwards as might be required,
without either tacking or wearing.  These formidable looking props were
conspicuously stuck out before him, where they kept cruising about, of
their own accord apparently, as if they were running away with the man;
while, as he walked, he vehemently swung his arms backwards and
forwards, as if they had been paddles necessary to propel him ahead,
carrying on leisurely when he first turned, but gradually increasing
his pace as he proceeded, until he sculled along at a terrible rate.
His head was very large, and thatched with a great fell of coarse red
hair, hanging down in greasy masses on each side of his pale freckled
visage, until it blended into two immense, whiskers, which he
cultivated under his chin with such care, that he appeared to be
peeping through a fur collar, like a Madagascar ourang-outang.  His
eyes were large, prominent, and of a faded blue, like those of a dead
fish; his general loveliness being diversified by a very noticeable
squint.  He had absolutely no eyebrows, but a curious nondescript sort
of tumble-out forehead, as like an ill-washed winter-turnip in its
phrenological developement as one could well imagine; and as for his
nose, it had the regular twist of a rifleman's powder-horn.  But his
lovely mouth, who shall describe it?  Disdaining to claim acquaintance
with the aforesaid beak, it had chosen its site under the left eye, so
that a line--I here address myself to mathematical readers--drawn from
the innermost corner of the right eye, and intersecting the tip of the
snout, would have touched the starboard corner of the aforesaid hole in
his face--it could be dignified with no other name; for, in sober
reality, it more resembled a gash in a pumpkin, made by a clumsy
bill-hook, than any thing else.

Lips he had none; and the first impression on one's mind when you saw
him naturally led one to exclaim, Bless me--what an oddity!  The man
has no mouth--until he did make play with his potato-trap, and then to
be sure it was like a gap suddenly split open in a piece of mottled
freestone.  It was altogether so much out of its latitude, that when he
spoke it seemed _aside_, as the players say; and when he drank his
wine, he looked for all the world as if he had been pouring it into his
ear.

So now, if the admiring reader will take the trouble to dress this
Beauty, I will furnish the apparel.  Imprimis, he wore a curious _wee_
hat, with scarcely any brim, the remains of the nap bleached by a
burning sun, and splashed and matted together from the pelting of
numberless showers and the washing up of many a salt-sea spray, but
carefully garnished, nevertheless, with a double stripe of fresh
gold-lace, and a naval button on the left side.  Add to this, an
old-fashioned uniform coat, very far _through_, as we say;
long-waisted, with remarkably short skirts, but the strap for the
epaulet new and bright as the loop on the hat.  Now, then, swathe him
in a dingy white kerseymere waistcoat, over which dangles a great horn
eye-glass, suspended by a magnificent new broad watered black ribbon;
and, finally, take the trouble to shrowd the lower limbs of the Apollo
in ancient duck trowsers, extending about half-way down the calf of the
leg, if calf he had; leaving his pillar-like ankles conspicuously
observable; and you will have a tolerably accurate idea of the presence
and bearing of our amiable and accomplished shipmate, Mr David Sprawl.

Rum subject as he certainly was to look at, yet he was a most excellent
warm-hearted person at bottom; straightforward and kind to the men;
never blazoning or amplifying their faults, but generally, on the other
hand, softening them; and often astonishing the poor fellows by his
out-of-the-way and unexpected kindness and civility.  Indeed, he plumed
himself on the general polish of his manners, whether to equals or
inferiors, and the Gazelles repaid the compliment by christening him,
at one time, "Old Bloody Politeful," and "David Doublepipe" at another,
from a peculiarity that we shall presently describe.

You must know, therefore, that this remarkable personage was possessed
of a very uncommon accomplishment, being neither more nor less than a
natural ventriloquist, for he had two distinct voices, as if he had
been a sort of living double flageolet; one a _falsetto_, small and
liquid, and clear as the note of an octave flute; the other sonorous
and rough, as the groaning of a trombone.  In conversation, the
alternations, apparently involuntary, were so startling and abrupt,
that they sounded as if ever and anon the keys of the high and low
notes of an organ had been alternately struck; so instantaneously were
the small notes snapped off into the lower ones, and _vice versa_--so
that a stranger would, in all probability, have concluded, had he not
known the peculiarities of the Adonis, that a little midshipman was at
one moment squeaking up the main hatchway from the hold; and at the
next answered by a boatswain's mate on deck.  Indeed, while the
commodore and his subaltern pursued their rapid walk, backwards and
forwards, on the quarterdeck, the fine, manly, sailor-like voice of the
old man, as it intertwined with the octave flute note and the grumbling
bass of David Sprawl, like a three-strand rope of gold thread, silver
thread, and tarry spunyarn, might have given cause to believe that the
two were accompanied in their perambulations by some invisible
familiar, who chose to take part in the conversation, and to denote his
presence through the ear, while to the eye he was but thin air.
However, maugre appearances and the oddity of his conformation, friend
Sprawl was physically the most powerful man on board; and that was
saying something, let me tell you.

Thus beloved by the men, to his brother-officers he was the most
obliging and accommodating creature that ever was invented.  Numberless
were the petty feuds which he soldered, that, but for his warm-hearted
intervention, might have eventuated in pistol-shots and gunpowder; and
the mids of the ship actually adored him.  If leave to go on shore, or
any little immunity was desired by them, "Old Bloody Politeful" was the
channel through which their requests ran; and if any bother was to be
eschewed, or any little fault sheltered, or any sternness on the part
of the commodore or any of the lieutenants to be mollified,--in fine,
if any propitiation of the higher powers was required, who interceded
but "Davie Doublepipe?"  In a word, men and midshipmen would have
fought for him to the last gasp; and although they did laugh a little
at his oddities now and then, they always came back to this,--"He is
the best seaman and the bravest man in the ship," as indeed repeated
trials had proved him to be.

The remarkable couple that I have taken so much pains to describe to
you continued to stump along the quarterdeck, backwards and forwards,
very rapidly; and at the end of every turn, Sprawl, in place of tacking
with his face to his companion, invariably wore with his back to him,
and so lumbersome and slowly, that the commodore usually had wheeled,
and stood facing him, ready to set forth on his promenade long before
Mr Sprawl came round; so that, while his back was towards him, he had
an opportunity of giving his broad shoulders a quizzical reconnoitring
glance, which he instantly exchanged for the most sedate and sober
expression, when our friend at length hove about and fronted him.  This
contrast between the fun of the commodore's expression when his
subaltern's back was towards him, and its solemnity when he turned his
face, was most laughable; more especially, that he always met Sprawl,
as he came to the wind, with a sidling bow, before he made sail in his
usual pace; which slight inclination the lieutenant answered with a
formal inclination of his whole strange corpus, whereby he stopped his
way to such a degree, that Sir Oliver had filled on the other tack, and
shot three or four strides ahead; whereby Sprawl had to clap the steam
on at a very high pressure, in order to scull up alongside of his
superior, before he arrived at the other wheeling point, the break of
the quarter-deck.

The postponed dinner-hour having at length arrived, the commodore,
making a formal salaam, dived to enjoy his meal, whereof I was the only
partaker this day beside himself; and nothing particular occurred until
the following morning.

The next forenoon Dick Lanyard was the officer of the watch, and, about
nine o'clock, the commodore, who had just come on deck, addressed
him:--"Mr Lanyard, do you see any thing of the small hooker yet, to
windward there?"

"I thought I saw something like her, sir, about half an hour ago; but a
blue haze has come rolling down, and I cannot make any thing out at
present."

"She must be thereabouts somewhere, however," continued he, "as she was
seen yesterday by the Yankee brig,--so keep by the wind until four
bells, Mr Lanyard, and then call me, if you please."

"Ay, ay, sir;" and he resumed his walk on the weather-side of the
quarterdeck.

In a couple of hours we were all on deck again; as the breeze freshened
the mist blew off, and in half an hour the felucca was seen about three
miles to windward of us, staggering along before it, like a large
nautilus, under her solitary lateen sail;--presently she was close
aboard of us.

I was looking steadfastly at the little vessel as she came rolling down
before the wind, keeping my eye on the man that was bending on the
ensign haulyards.  First of all, he began to hoist away the ensign,
until it reached about half-way between the end of the long, drooping,
wirelike yard and the deck; he then jerked it upwards and downwards for
a minute, as if irresolute whether to run it chokeup, or haul it down
again; at length it hung half-mast high, and blew out steadily.

My mind suddenly misgave me, and I looked for the pennant; it was also
hoisted half-mast--"Alas! alas! poor Donovan," I involuntarily
exclaimed--but loud enough to be overheard by the commodore, who stood
by--"another victim to this horrid coast."

"What is wrong, Mr Brail?" said Sir Oliver.

"I fear Mr Donovan is dead, sir.  The felucca's ensign and pennant are
half-mast, sir."

"Bless me, no--surely not!" said the excellent old man;--"hand me the
glass.--Too true--too true--where is all this to end?" said he with a
sigh.

The felucca was now within long pistol-shot of our weather-quarter,
standing across our stern, with the purpose of rounding-to under our
lee.  At this time Sir Oliver was looking out close by the tafferel,
with his trumpet in his hand.  I was again peering through the glass.
"Why, there is the strangest figure come on deck, on board the Midge,
that I ever saw--what can it be?  Sir Oliver, will you please to look
at it?"

The commodore took the glass with the greatest good-humour, while he
handed me his trumpet,--"Really," said he, "I cannot tell--Mr Sprawl,
can you?"  Sprawl--honest man--took his spell at the telescope--but
_he_ was equally unsuccessful.  The figure that was puzzling us was a
half-naked man, in his shirt and trowsers, with a large blue shawl
bound round his head, who had suddenly jumped on deck, with a hammock
thrown over his shoulders as if it had been a dressing gown; the clew
hanging half-way down his back, while the upper part of the
canvass-shroud was lashed tightly round his neck, but so as to leave
his arms and legs free scope; and there he was strutting about with the
other clew trailing away astern of him, like the train of a lady's
gown, as if he had in fact been arrayed in what was anciently called a
curricle-robe.  Over this extraordinary array there was slung a
formidable Spanish _trabuco_, or blunderbuss, across his body; and one
hand, as he walked backwards and forwards on the small confined deck of
the felucca, held a large green silk umbrella over his head, although
the sail of itself was shade enough at the time; while the other
clutched a speaking trumpet.

The craft, freighted with this uncouth apparition, was very peculiar in
appearance.  She had been a Spanish gun-boat--originally a twin-sister
to one that Gazelle had, during the war, cut out from Rosas bay.  She
was about sixty feet long over all, and seventeen feet beam; her deck
being as round as her bottom; in fact she was more like a long cask
than any thing else, but with a most beautiful run notwithstanding, and
without exception the roomiest vessel of her size that I ever saw.  She
had neither bulwarks, quarters, nor rail, nor in fact any ledge
whatever round the gunnel, so that she had no use for scuppers.  Her
stern, peaked up like a New Zealand war-canoe, tapering away to a
point, which was perforated to receive the rudder-head, while forward
she had a sharp beak, shaped like the proa of a Roman galley; but she
was as strong as wood and iron could make her--her bottom being a
perfect bed of timbers, so that they might have been caulked--and tight
as a bottle.  What answered to a bowsprit was a short thumb of a stick
about ten feet high, that rose at an angle of thirty degrees; and she
had only one mast, a strong stump of a spar, about thirty feet high,
stayed well forward, in place of raking aft; high above which rose the
large lateen sail already mentioned, with its long elastic spliced and
respliced yard tapering away up into the sky, until it seemed no
thicker than the small end of a fishing-rod when bent by the weight of
the line and bait.  It was of immense length, and consisted of more
than half a-dozen different pieces.  Its heavy iron-shod heel was
shackelled, by a chain a fathom long, to a strong iron-bar, or bolt,
that extended athwart the forepart of the little vessel, close to the
heel of the bowsprit, and to which it could be hooked and unhooked, as
need were, when she tacked, and it became necessary to jib the sail.

The outlandish-looking craft slowly approached, and we were now within
hail.  "I hope nothing is amiss with Mr Donovan?" sung out the
commodore.

"By the powers, but there is though!" promptly replied the curious
figure with the trumpet and umbrella, in a strong clear voice.--A pause.

All our glasses were by this time levelled at the vessel, and everyone
more puzzled than another what to make of it.

"Who are you, sir?" again asked the commodore.  "Where is Mr Donovan?"

Here Mr Binnacle, a midshipman on board, hailed us through his hand,
but we could not hear him; on which the man in the hammock struck him,
without any warning, across the pate with his trumpet.  The midshipman
and the rest of the crew, we could see, now drew close together
forward, and, from their gestures, seemed to be preparing to make a
rush upon the figure who had hailed.

Sir Oliver repeated his question--"Who are you, sir?"

"Who am I, did you say?  That's a good one," was the answer.

"Why, Sir Oliver," said I, "I believe _that_ is Mr Donovan himself.
Poor fellow, he must have gone mad."

"No doubt of it--it is so, sir," whistled Sprawl.

Here the crew of the felucca, led by little Binnacle, made a rush aft,
seized the lieutenant, and having overpowered him, launched their
little shallop, in which the midshipman, with two men, instantly shoved
off; but they had not paddled above half a-dozen yards from the
vessel's side, when the maniac, a most powerful man, broke from those
who held him, knocked them down, right and left, like so many
nine-pins, and seizing his _trabuco_, pointed it at the skiff, while he
sung out in a voice of thunder--"Come back, Mr Binnacle; come back, you
small villain, or I will shoot you dead."

The poor lad was cowed, and did as he was desired.

"Lower away the jolly boat," cried the commodore, in a flaming passion;
but checking himself, he continued--"Gently, men--belay there--keep all
fast with the boat, Mr Lanyard," who had jumped aft to execute the
order--"We must humour the poor fellow, after all, who is evidently not
himself."

I could hear a marine, a half crazy creature, of the name of Lennox,
who stood by, on this whisper to his neighbour--"Ay, Sir Oliver, better
fleech with a madman than fecht with him."

"Are you Mr Donovan, pray?" said the commodore, mildly, but still
speaking through the trumpet.

"I _was_ that gentleman," was the startling answer.

"Then come on board, man; come on board," in a wheedling tone.

"How would you have me to do that thing?" said poor Donovan.  "Come on
board, did you say?  Divil now, Sir Oliver, you are mighthy
unrasonable."

His superior officer was somewhat shoved off his balance by this most
extraordinary reply from his lieutenant, and rapped out, fiercely
enough--"Come on board this instant, sir, or by the Lord, I"----

"How can I do that thing, and me dead since three bells in the middle
watch last night?"  This was grumbled as it were through his trumpet,
but presently he shouted out as loud as he could bellow--"I can't come;
and, what's more, I won't; for I died last night, and am to be buried
whenever it goes eight bells at noon."

"Dead!" said the commodore, now _seriously_ angry.  "Dead, did he say?
Why, he is drunk, gentlemen, and not mad.  There is always _some_
method in madness; here there is none."  Till recollecting
himself--"Poor fellow, let me try him a little farther; but really it
is too absurd"--as he looked round and observed the difficulty both
officers and men had in keeping countenance--"Let me humour him a
little longer," continued he.  "Pray, Mr Donovan, how can you be dead,
and speaking to me now?"

"Because," said Donovan promptly, "I have a forenoon's leave from
purgatory to see myself decently buried, Sir Oliver."

Here we could no longer contain ourselves, and, notwithstanding the
melancholy and humiliating spectacle before us, a shout of laughter
burst from all hands fore and aft simultaneously, as the commodore,
exceedingly tickled, sung out--"Oh, I _see_ how it is--I see--so do
come on board, Mr Donovan, and we _will_ see you properly buried."

"You _see_, Sir Oliver!" said the poor fellow; "to be sure you do--a
blind horse might persave it."

"I say, Dennis dear," quoth I, "I will be answerable that all the
honours shall be paid you."  But the deceased Irishman was not to be
had so easily, and again refused, point-blank, to leave the Midge.

"Lower away the boat there, Mr Sprawl," said Sir Oliver; "no use in all
this; you see he won't come.  Pipe away her crew, Mr Lanyard, do you
hear?  So, brisk now--brisk--be off.  Take the surgeon with you, and
bring that poor fellow on board instantly.  Here, Brail, go too, will
ye--you are a favourite of his, and probably he will take more kindly
to you than any one else."

We shoved off--and in a twinkling we were alongside--"What cheer,
Donovan, my darling?  How are you, man, and how do you all do?"

"Ah, Benjamin, glad to see you, my boy.  I hope you have come to read
the service: I'm to be buried at noon, you know."

"Indeed!" said I, "I know nothing of the kind.  I have come on board
from the commodore to know how you are; he thought you had been ill."

"Very much obliged," continued the poor fellow; "all that sort of thing
might have brought joy some days ago--but now!"----

"Well, well, Donovan," said I, "come on board with me, and buried you
shall be comfortably from the frigate."

"Well, I will go.  This cursed sailmaker of ours has twice this morning
refused to lash me up in the hammock, because he chose to say I was not
dead; so go with you I will."

The instant the poor fellow addressed himself to enter the boat, he
shrank back like a rabid dog at water.  "I cannot--I cannot.
Sailmaker, bring the shot aft, and do lash me up in my hammock, and
heave me comfortably overboard at once."

The poor sailmaker, who was standing close to, caught my eye, and my
ear also.  "What shall I do, sir?" said he.

I knew the man to be a steady, trustworthy person.  "Why, humour him,
Warren; humour him.  Fetch the shot, and lash him up; but sling him
round the waist by a strong three-inch rope, do you hear."

The man touched his forehead, and slunk away.  Presently he returned
with the cannon-balls slung in a canvass bag, the usual receptacle of
his needles, palms, and thread, and deliberately fastened them round Mr
Donovan's legs.  He then lashed him up in the hammock, coaxing his arms
under the swathing, so that, while I held him in play, he regularly
sewed him up into a most substantial strait waistcoat.  It would have
been laughable enough, if risibility had been pardonable under such
melancholy circumstances, to look at the poor fellow as he now stood
stiff and upright, like a bolt of canvass on end, swaying about, and
balancing himself, as the vessel rolled about on the heave of the sea;
but by this time the sail-maker had fastened the rope securely round
his waist, one end of which was in the clutch of three strong fellows,
with plenty of the slack coiled down and at hand, had it proved
necessary to pay out, and give him scope.

"Now, Donovan, dear, come into the boat; do, and let us get on board,
will ye."

"Benjamin Brail--I expected kindlier thing's at your hands, Benjie.
How _can_ I go on board of the old Gazelle, seeing it has gone seven
bells" (although it was in reality five in the afternoon), "and I'm to
be hove overboard at twelve o'clock?"

I saw there was nothing else for it, so I whispered little Binnacle to
strike eight bells.  At the first chime, poor Donovan pricked up his
ear; at the second, he began to settle himself on deck; and before the
last struck, he was stretched out on a grating with his eyes closed,
and really as still and motionless as if he had been actually dead.  I
jumped on board, muttered a sentence or two, from recollection, of the
funeral service, and tipping the wink, we hove him bodily, stoop and
roop, overboard, where he sank for a couple of fathoms, when we hauled
him up again.  When he sank, he was much excited, and flushed and
feverish to look at; but when he was now got into the boat, he was
still enough, God knows, and very blue and ghastly; his features were
sharp and pinched, and he could only utter a low moaning noise when we
had stretched him along the bottom of the boat.  "Mercy!" said I,
"surely my experiment has not killed him?"  However, our best plan now
was to get back to the frigate as soon as might be, so Lanyard, who had
purposely kept in the background, now gave the word to shove off, and
in a minute we were all on the Gazelle's quarterdeck; poor Donovan
having been hoisted up, lashed into an accommodation chair.  He was
instantly taken care of, and, in our excellent surgeon's hands, I am
glad to say that he recovered, and lived to be an ornament to the
service, and a credit to all connected with him for many a long day
afterwards.

The first thing little Binnacle did was to explain to Sir Oliver that
he had been ill for three days with brain fever, having had a stroke of
the sun; but aware of the heavy responsibility of taking forcibly the
command of a vessel from one's superior officer, he was allowed to have
it all his own way until the Gazelle hove in sight.

"Pray, Mr Binnacle," said the commodore, "have you brought me the
letters and the English newspapers?"

"Yes, Sir Oliver; here they are, sir; and here is a memorandum of
several vessels expected on this part of the coast that we got from the
Cerberus, sir."

"Oh, let me see."

After a long pause, the commodore again spoke.

"Why, Mr Binnacle, I have no tidings of the vessels you speak of; but I
suppose we must stand in for the point indicated, and take our chance
of falling in with them.  But where got you all these men?  Did the
Cerberus man you?"

"No, sir, she did not.  Ten of the men were landed at Cape Coast, out
of the Tobin, Liverpool trader.  They are no great things, sir,
certainly; they had been mutinous, so the merchantman who unshipped
them chose to make the run home with five free negroes instead.  But if
they be bad, there is not much of them, for they are the smallest men I
ever saw."

The chap who spoke--little Binnacle, viz.--was not quite a giant
himself.  He was a dapper little bluejacket, about five feet two.  His
boat's, or rather his canoe's crew, were all very little men, but still
evidently full-grown, and not boys.  Every thing about the craft he had
come from was diminutive, except her late commander.  The midshipman
was small--the men were all pigmies.  The vessel herself could not have
carried one of the pyramids of Egypt.  The very bandy-legged cur that
yelped and scampered along her deck was a small cock-tailed affair that
a large Newfoundland _canis_ might easily have swallowed for his
breakfast.

After Binnacle had made his report to Sir Oliver, he, with an arch
smile, handed me the following letter, open, which I have preserved to
this hour for the satisfaction of the curious.  Many a time have I
since laughed and almost cried over this production of poor Donovan's
heated brain:--


"MY DEAR BRAIL,--When you receive this, I shall be at rest far down
amongst the tangleweed and coral branches at the bottom of the deep
green sea, another sacrifice to the insatiable demon of this evil
climate--another melancholy addition to the long list of braver and
better men who have gone before me.  Heaven knows, and I know, and
lament with much bitterness therefor, that I am ill prepared to die,
but I trust to the mercy of the Almighty for pardon and forgiveness.

"It is now a week since I was struck by a flash of lightning at
noonday, when there was not a speck of cloud in the blue sky, that
glanced like a fiery dart right down from the fierce sun, and not
having my red woollen nightcap on, that I purchased three years ago
from old Jabos of Belfast, the Jew who kept a stall near the quay, it
pierced through the skull just in the centre of the bald spot, and set
my brain a-boiling and poppling ever since, making a noise for all the
world like a buzzing bee-hive.  I therefore intend to depart this life
at three bells in the middle watch this very night, wind and weather
permitting.  Alas, alas! who shall tell this to my dear old mother,
Widow Donovan, who lives at No. 1050, in Sackville Street, Dublin, the
widest thoroughfare in Europe?--or to poor Cathleen O'Haggarty?  You
know Cathleen, Benjie; but you must never know that she has a glass
eye--Ah, yes, poor thing, she had only one eye, but that _was_ a
beauty; the other was a quaker;[2] but then she had five thousand good
sterling pounds, all in old Peter Macshane's bank at the back of the
Exchange; and so her one eye was a blessing to me; for where is the
girl with two eyes, and five thousand pounds, all lodged in Peter
Macshane's bank at the back of the Exchange, who would have looked at
Dennis Donovan, a friendless, penniless lieutenant in the Royal Navy,
and son of Widow Donovan, who lives at 1050, Sackville Street, Dublin,
the widest thoroughfare in Europe?--Ah, how Cathleen will pipe her real
eye--I wonder if she will weep with the false one--I am sure my story
might bring tears from a stone, far more a piece of glass--Oh, when she
hears I am gone, she will be after breaking her tender little
heart--Oh, murder for the notion of it--that's the thought that I can't
bear--that is the blow that kills Ned!  The last words of Dennis
Donovan, who has nothing on earth to brag of beside a mighty pretty
person and a brave soul--that's a good one.  Adieu, adieu.  God bless
the King and the Royal Family entirely.

"DENNIS DONOVAN,

"_Lieutenant, R.N., and son of Widow Donovan, who lives at_ 1050,
_Sackville Street, Dublin, the widest thoroughfare in Europe._"


[2] A sham wooden gun.


To return.

"And pray," said the commodore, "what captures may you have made in
this redoubtable man-of-war of yours--in his Britannic Majesty's
felucca, Midge?"

"Why, none, sir," said wee Middy, blushing; "but I hope you will soon
put us in the way of having a brush, sir."

"We shall see, we shall see," said the good-hearted old sailor; "but
come and take a glass of wine, Mr Binnacle, and after you have told Mr
Lanyard all about the Midge, what she _has_, and _wants_, &c., get on
board again, and keep near us for the evening.--I say, Mr Steelpen," to
his clerk, who was lounging about, "Come to the cabin, now, will you,
and draw out Mr Lanyard's instructions, as Mr Garboard is still
confined to his cot."

This was the second lieutenant, who had been ill for a week with fever.

The moment I knew Lanyard was going in the Midge, I determined to
accompany him if possible, so I asked the commodore's leave--hinting,
that my knowledge of the rivers might be of use.  He laughed.

"Pilot, indeed--mind you don't evaporate in one of your pilotings, and
then what shall I say to your friends, Master Benjamin?"

I pressed my suit.

"Why, my good boy, you had better not--take my word for it, if you
carry on in this way, you will either get your head broken, or be
caught by one of these infernal marsh fevers, which will be worse."

"No fear, Sir Oliver, I am a seasoned cask--do give me leave--I shall
be back in a week."

"Well, well, as you please, my young master."

And it was at once so fixed.

Lanyard heard the order given, and instantly set about getting his kit
arranged for his departure, although he seemed to think it would have
been more pleasing in his excellent captain had he appeared to have
consulted him a little on the subject; but to hear was to obey, and
Dick was quite ready to move by the time he was sent for to receive his
orders, when I adjourned to the cabin also, to say good by.  Sir Oliver
was sitting at his wine; and so soon as the steward had left us to
ourselves, the knight rang the bell, the cord of which, ending in a
handsome brass handle, hung within a foot of his head.

"Potter, send the first lieutenant here."

Sprawl was in immediate attendance.

"Glad to see you, Mr Sprawl; sit down, and take wine."

After a pause--

"Do you think, if the breeze holds, that we shall make the land again
before morning, Mr Sprawl?"

"No, sir, for we have run thirty miles off since morning, and there is
no appearance of any wind at present; but we should be able,
notwithstanding, to beat up to it by noon to-morrow."

"Very well.  Pray, Mr Lanyard, how many men, counting the strangers,
are there on board?"

"Thirty-three, sir, all told."

"And the gun she carries?"

"A long twelve, sir, with a six-inch howitzer affair fitted forward,
for throwing grape."

"Do you think you could stow ten men more, comfortably?"

Dick had been on board of his new command before he came down, and had
made such passing observations as the time permitted.

"Why, I daresay, for a few days we might, sir."

"Then send your purser, or whoever may be acting for him, aboard this
evening."

The lieutenant made his bow, whipped off his glass, and went on deck to
be off.  It was getting dark fast--the wind had risen suddenly--the
frigate had been carrying top-gallant sails up to the time I had gone
below, but they were now handed, and the watch were in the act of
taking a reef in the top-sails.

"Whereabouts is the felucca?" said I to the officer of the watch, the
old gunner, who, in the absence of Mr Garboard, the second lieutenant,
who, as already stated, was sick and in his cot, had charge of the deck.

"Close to, sir," was the reply; but presently he continued, looking
over the side, "Deuce take me, sir, if I can see her just at this
present"----

"You don't?  I say, quartermaster, do you see the small craft down to
leeward there?"

"No, sir.  I sees nothing of her; but she can't be far away, sir, as
she was close to, within this last half hour."

By this time the night had fallen with a heavy dew and a thick haze.
Presently we saw a small spark down to leeward.

"Ah," said the man again, "there she is; she is in chase of something,
sir."

"What can they mean?" said Lanyard.  "They know they cannot follow out
their chase when I am on board here."

The riddle was soon read.  Little Binnacle had returned on board, and,
as it turned out, he was determined to have some fun, in the
interregnum between the unshipping of poor Donovan and Lanyard's
appointment.

"What is that abeam of us?" said Mr Sprawl, who had now come on
deck.--"Hand me up the night-glass, Jeremy."

He worked away with it for some time.  At length Lanyard spoke.

"Why, Sprawl, will you have the kindness to fire a gun, and show a
light at the mizen peak, as the felucca _must_ be hereabouts?"

"True enough, Lanyard, she cannot be far off, but"----Here we saw
another flash, and this time we heard the report of the
cannon--"There," continued the first lieutenant,--"there she is, sure
enough; but how the devil can you expect her to come up to us, seeing
she is cut off by that large craft there?"  And he pointed a-beam of
us, where, following the direction indicated, I soon saw a large
vessel, standing under easy sail, on the same tack.

"Quartermaster," exclaimed Sprawl, "keep her away, and edge down
towards that chap, will ye?"

The commodore was now on deck.

"I was on the point of reporting to you, sir, that the felucca was a
good way off to leeward, apparently cut off by a strange sail, that is
sculling along right between us," said David Doublepipe.

"Whereabouts," said the captain, "whereabouts is this strange sail?
And why the deuce did the felucca not fire a gun?"

"She did, sir," answered the lieutenant, "but I could not divine what
she would be at, as she did not make the night-signal."

"True enough," said Lanyard.--"I daresay all the signals and
instructions, and every thing else, are locked up on board, sir.  May I
therefore request the favour of your standing down to her, or I don't
see how we shall manage at all?"

The weather now cleared, and the fog rose, or blew past.  Another flash
down to leeward, in the direction of the felucca, and presently she
burned a blue light, which cast a lurid wake on the rolling waters,
cresting the sparkling waves with a wavering line of unearthly light.
It lit up the little vessel and her white sail, and the whole horizon
in her neighbourhood, with a blue ghostly glare, across which, as a
bright background, we suddenly saw the tall spars, dark sails, and
opake hull of a large polacre brig intervene, as she gradually slid
along, rising and falling majestically on the midnight sea, between us
and the tender.

"Ah ha!" said the commodore.  "Why, Master Brail, your retreat is cut
off, and all the honour and glory will be gathered by the Midges
without you, for there the brig is bearing up--there, she has made us
out, and if the little fellows don't get out of her way, she will run
them down."

The black bank in the east now broke away, the newly risen moon shone
out bright and suddenly, and we distinctly saw the polacre crowding all
sail from us, with the gallant little Midge to leeward of him about
half a mile, under easy sail, apparently waiting for him, and standing
directly across the bows of his large antagonist, into which he once
more fired his long gun, and then as he came down, he luffed up, and
hove a capful of grape into him from his howitzer.  The chase up to
this time had not fired a shot, but continued to crowd all sail, the
little fellow now sticking in his skirts like a bur.

The night began to lower again; the wind fell from a fine working
breeze to nearly calm, and the rain soon began to descend in torrents.
At length it became stark calm, and as dark as the shrouded moon would
let it.  But every now and then we could see a tiny flash in the
south-east, that for a moment lit up the outline of the black sail of
the felucca, making the sweeps and figures of the men that pulled them
appear as black as ebony between us and the flash of the forwardmost
gun, which, on the other hand, glanced brightly against the stern,
sparkled in the windows, and lighted up the snow-white sails of the
brig, in pursuit of which the felucca had again bore up; the wreaths of
smoke rising and surrounding both vessels, like a luminous cloud, or a
bright halo.  Presently the peppering of musketry commenced from the
Midge, which showed she was overhauling the strange sail, and was
immediately returned from the chase, who now lowered his jolly-boat,
and began to fire for the first time from his stern chasers.  This was
in turn brilliantly replied to by the felucca, when all at once the
dark lateen sail came down between us and the bright flashes by the
run; on which her fire ceased, the breeze sprung up again, and all was
dark.  We stood on for ten minutes, when we saw a light right ahead,
and before we could shorten sail, were alongside of the felucca--the
little vessel, now a confused heap of black wreck, appearing to slide
past us like an object seen from a carriage window when travelling
rapidly; although it was the frigate that was in motion, while the
Midge lay like a log on the water.  Presently the _wee_
midshipman--Master Binnacle, who had returned on board of her, as
ordered, early in the evening--hailed.

"He is too big for us, sir; he has shot away our main haul-yards, and
hurt three of our men."

"Heave the ship to," said the commodore; "and, Mr Lanyard, go on board
with a boat's crew, take the carpenter with you, and see what is wrong.
Keep close by us till morning; or here,--take him in tow, Mr
Sprawl,"--to the first lieutenant,--"take him in tow."

We went on board Dick's forlorn command, and found the little vessel a
good deal cut up, in hulls, sails, and rigging, and three Midges
wounded, but none of them seriously.  They were sent on board the
frigate, which made all sail in chase, but next morning, when the day
broke, all that we could see of the polacre was a small white speck of
her royal, like the wing of a sea-gull, on our leebow; presently she
vanished entirely.

The breeze continued to freshen, and we carried on; in the afternoon we
made the land, near the mouth of the river we had been blockading, and
after having run in as close as we thought safe, we hove-to for the
night, determined to finish the adventure on the morrow.

By day-break, we were close in with the mouth of the estuary, but we
could see nothing of the polacre, and as the climate was none of the
wholesomest, we were making up our minds to be off again before the
night fell; when a canoe was seen coming down the muddy flow of the
river, which, even a mile or more at sea, preserved its thick brown
chocolate colour; with a square blanket for a sail, and manned by half
a dozen naked negroes.  She approached, and a rope was hove to her,
when she sheered alongside, and the steersman came on board.  He was a
wild uncultivated savage, and apparently did not understand a word of
English, Spanish, or French, but by signs we enquired of him if he had
seen any thing of the brig we were pursuing?  He indicated, after his
manner, that a big canoe had run up the river with that morning's tide,
and was now at anchor above the reach in sight.  However, his only
object appeared to be to sell his yams and fruit, with which his boat
was loaded.  And after he had done so, and we had gotten all the
information we could out of him, he shoved off; and we prepared to
ascend the river in the felucca, reinforced by ten supernumeraries from
the frigate, and accompanied by three of her boats, manned with thirty
men and fourteen marines, under the command of Mr Sprawl, in order to
overhaul our friend of the preceding evening.




CHAPTER II.

THE ATTACK.

We stood in, and as we approached I went aloft on the little stump of a
mast to look about me.  The leaden-coloured sea generally becomes
several shades lighter in tropical countries as you approach the shore,
unless the latter be regularly up and down, and deep close to.  In the
present instance, however, although it gradually shoaled, the blue
water, instead of growing lighter and greener, and brightening in its
approach to the land; became gradually of a chocolate colour, as the
turbid flow of the river feathered out like a fan, all round the mouth
of it.  But as the tide made, the colour changed, by the turgid stream
being forced back again, and before it was high water, the bar was
indicated by a semicircle of whitish light green, where the long swell
of the sea gradually shortened, until it ended in small tumbling waves
that poppled about and frothed as if the ebullitions had been hove up
and set in motion by some subterraneous fire.  But, as yet, the water
did not break on any part of the crescent-shaped ledge of sand.

In the very middle of the channel there were three narrow streaks of
blue water.  We chose the centre one; and while the frigate hove-to in
the offing, dashed over with a fine breeze, that, from the eddy round
the point to windward, was nearly a fair wind up the river.  For a
minute I thought we were in some peril when passing the _boiling_ water
on the bar; but presently we were gliding along the smooth surface of
the noble river.

On rounding the first point, right in the middle of the stream lay our
friend of the preceding night, moored stem and stern, with boarding
nettings up, and Spanish colours flying at the mizen-peak; but we could
see no one on board.  Sprawl therefore called a halt, and made the men
lie on their oars, as some savage pranks had lately been played by
slavers in these rivers, such as laying trains to their magazines when
they found capture inevitable, and various other pleasant little
surprises, one of which generally served a man for a lifetime.  So
being desirous of avoiding all chance of a hoist of this kind, we
dropped anchor in the felucca, and got the boats alongside, all to the
cutter, which was sent to pull round the polacre and reconnoitre.  On
the officer returning, he said he had seen nothing.  We therefore
determined to remain quiet for some time longer, to give any trick of
the nature glanced at, time to develope itself.  We lay for two hours
under the most intense heat I ever remember; the sun was absolutely
broiling us alive, for there was not the least breath of air, and the
surface of the sluggish river was one polished sheet of silver--the low
swampy banks being covered with mangrove bushes and dwarf palms,
preventing any breeze there might be from finding its way to us.

"Now," said Lieutenant Sprawl, "this is really very unentertaining.  I
say, Benjie, my dear, I think I had better pull under the stern of the
polacre to reconnoitre a bit.  I will take care that I do not go too
near."

"I see no objections to it," said I, "none in the world; but mind your
hand, my hearty--don't go too far, as they are slippery chaps these
same slaving gentry--that _I_ can tell you."

The boat shoved off--we were eating our hasty dinner on deck at the
moment--and proceeded without let or hinderance until she arrived
within pistol-shot of the polacre, when lo! from amongst the green
bushes on the river bank, about musket-shot from them, a burst of white
smoke flew up, and several round shot hopped along the calm surface,
stirring up the water with whizzing splashes.  The next moment the
shrieks of the cutter's crew gave notice that they had told in a
fearful manner.  We looked out a-head.  The wreck of the boat, with
eight of her crew, including the lieutenant, holding on by it, came
floating down to us; she had been knocked to pieces by the fire of the
masked battery that had so unexpectedly opened, but the poor devils
were promptly picked up; all to one unfortunate fellow who had been
killed and now floated past us on his back, with his chest up, and his
head down.  Old Davie Doublepipe scrambled on board, in nowise greatly
put out by his rough reception.

"Why now," said he, "a surprise of this kind is extremely inconvenient."

"But where the deuce came the shot from?" said I.

"The devil only knows," quoth he; "every thing seemed as quiet as could
be, when all at once--crash--the shot took us right amidships, and the
next moment we were all floundering in the water, like so many pigs
overboard."

"Well, well, lucky it is no worse," rejoined honest Dick Lanyard; "but
I say, Master Marline," to the senior midshipman of the frigate, who
commanded one of the other boats, "we can't lie here to be murdered, so
strike out for the polacre, keeping t'other side of the river, and her
hull between you and the skulkers; then pull straight for her, but haul
off if you see any one on board; and if any annoyance is offered from
the shore this time, I will weigh and give our concealed friends a dose
of grape."

The boat shoved off, and pulled towards the enemy in the manner
directed.  All was quiet until she reached within ten yards of her,
when a blaze of six pieces of cannon at the fewest once more took
place, and eddies of smoke again gushed from the bushes.  The boat
instantly took the hint, put about, and returned to us.  Her stern had
been nearly knocked to pieces, and she was leaking so much, that by the
time she was alongside, she was full of water, and the men had only
time to get out, when she sank to the gunwale.

"By the powers!" said Lanyard, driven off his balance, cool as he was,
"but there is mighty little fun in all this.  What see you, my
man?"--to one of the people who had scrambled up the long yard to
reconnoitre from whence the shots had proceeded; but he could give no
information.  The smoke rolled away down the dull river in white
wreaths, growing more and more gauzelike and transparent, as they
passed us, and all was quiet, and green, and noiseless on the bank as
before; while the sun continued to shine down on us with the same
sickening intensity, heating the thick unwholesome air, until it was
almost unfit for breathing.

"Something must be done," said I--"we must dislodge these fellows or be
off, that is clear."

"Do you think," said Lanyard, addressing himself to the discomfited
first lieutenant, who was shaking his feathers, and drying himself as
well as he could, "that there is water for us to sheer alongside where
these scoundrels are ensconced?"

"I consider there must be," said he, "but we had better remain quiet
where we are until night, if they will let us, so that we may be off
with the ebb if need be."

The advice was good and discreet.  So Old Bloody Politeful, Dick
Lanyard, and I set to clean our beautiful persons, and make ourselves
as comfortable as our scanty means permitted, while the men did the
same.  It was now near five P.M., and the tide began to flow again.  As
there were two good hours daylight still, we determined to prove our
friends a little further, rather than lie inactive any longer--the same
restless feeling had spread to the men.

"The tide is on the turn now, sir," said the old quartermaster.

"Then all hands up anchor--weigh, and sweep in close to that dwarf palm
there."

The smoke had come from a spot close under its shade.

"Hurrah!" shouted the men.

The anchor was catted--the sweeps were manned--the guns were loaded
with grape--the marines stood to their arms, and in five minutes we
were once more at anchor, with the two boats in tow, within half-pistol
shot of the bank.  All remained still.  Not a breath stirred the leaves
of the mangrove bushes, or the jungle of wild cane that grew close to
the river brink.  I was sure we were directly opposite the spot from
whence the shots were fired.

Whenever we were fairly settled in our position, we let drive both
guns.  The grape pattered in the water, and rattled amongst the leaves
of the trees, but all continued still as death.  We loaded and fired
again; but as we had only one boat untouched, Mr Sprawl determined,
instead of attempting a landing, in order to cope with enemies whom we
could not see, to weigh and sweep towards the brig again, with the
intention, if opportunity offered, of boarding her.  But the moment we
turned our stern to the shore, and began to pull in that
direction--bang--several cannon were again fired at us, in this
instance loaded with round and grape, but fortunately missed us this
time.

"Pull, men, like fury; give way, and clap the hull of the brig between
you and our honest friends there."  Crack--another rally from the
masked battery; the next minute, we had swept round the stern of the
polacre, and were alongside.  Lanyard laid hold of the manrope--"Now,
men, there can be no tricks here, or they would have shown themselves
before now; so, follow me."  The rope gave in his grasp, and a gun
exploded on board.  Dick fell back on the deck of the felucca.  "Cast
off your fastenings, and sheer off, my lads, or we may get a hoist we
don't dream of."

At this instant the battery on shore began to play in earnest; not in
broadsides, but by single guns, as fast as they could pepper; some of
the shot coming through and through both sides of the polacre.  We
immediately hauled off for the opposite bank of the river, but took the
ground on a bank, where the current, setting strong down, jammed us
hard and fast.  We were about two cables' length from the brig at this
time, and the sun was now near setting.  The firing continued, the
flashes became brighter, the smoke began, as the sky darkened, to grow
luminous, and presently the polacre appeared to be sinking.  "She is
settling fast down forward," said I; "by St Patrick, she is sinking,
sure enough,--there--there she goes; what a list to port she is
getting!"  She slowly fell over on her beam-ends, in the mud, with
every thing under water but about ten feet of the quarter bulwark next
us, and the masts and rigging; which the setting sun was now gilding.
The long shadows of the palms on the western bank now gradually crept
across the whole breadth of the unwholesome stream, chasing the
blood-red gleam of the sinking sun, first from the water, and then from
the eastern bank, where it lingered for a moment, on the topmost
branches of the trees, from which it also speedily disappeared, until
the only objects that vouched for his being still above the horizon,
were the wand-like tops of the polacre's tall masts, that shone like
burnished brass rods for a brief moment; and then blackened under the
fast falling darkness, which rapidly shrouded the whole melancholy
scene; while creeping churchyard-looking vapours, as if the pestilence
no longer walked in darkness, but had become palpable to the senses of
sight, smell, and feeling, shrouded every object on the shores from our
view, like a London fog.  Myriads of musquittoes now began to attack us
in every way, and several white cranes flitted past and around us, like
ghosts, sailing slowly on their wide-spread wings; the chirping and
croaking of numberless insects and reptiles came off strong from the
banks, borne on the putrid exhalations that were like to poison us; the
rushing of the river, that in the daytime we could scarcely hear, now
sounded loud and hoarse, and rippled, lip, lipping against the stem as
we lay aground, before circling away in dark frothy eddies in our wake.

We lay still for several hours without seeing any light, or hearing any
noises on shore that indicated the vicinity of our dangerous
neighbours.  Once tempted by the apparent quietude, the boat shoved off
a stroke or two in the direction of the polacre, with the intention of
setting fire to her, if possible; but when within pistol-shot of their
object, a loud voice from the shore sang out in a threatening
tone--"_Cuidado_"[1] when the officer wisely pulled round, and returned
to us.


[1] Literally--Take care--mind your eye.


We could hear the frigate in the offing through the livelong night,
firing signal guns every ten minutes, which we durst not answer,
without the certainty of being speedily blown to pieces by our
invisible antagonists.  About ten o'clock, I went along with little
Binnacle, in one of the boats with muffled oars, and made directly for
the bank opposite where he had been fired at; on a nearer approach, I
found it to be free of mangroves, and to consist of a black overhanging
_scaur_, that had been scarped out by the rush of the stream, reflected
across from the jutting point on the side where the slavers had
intrenched themselves.  All continued still, and here we skulked for a
full hour, when we stole out, and pulled gently towards the wreck, the
hull of which, either from a fresh in the river, or the rising of the
tide, was now entirely under water.  But we had not advanced above
fifty yards towards our object, when the same unearthly "_beware_"
swung booming along the water; reflected in a small echo from the
opposite side, as if a water fiend had been answered by a spirit of the
air.  We got back to the felucca, and now made up our minds to while
away the time until the day broke, in the best way we could.  All hands
being set to cooper the damaged boat, of which we contrived to make a
very tolerable job, so that she leaked very little.

The lieutenant in command, Lanyard, and I, now went below, and
immediately sent for the three midshipmen detached on the same service.
We had some grog and a piece of rancid mess beef, and as turning in was
out of the question, we planked it on the deck and lockers, and by the
help of boat cloaks and blankets, were endeavouring to make ourselves
as comfortable as we could, when the sound of a cannon-shot was once
more heard.

"Why, what the deuce," said I, "we are making no movement--what can the
fellows mean?"

There was no saying; they might, from the success they had met with in
neutralizing the attempts of the boats to disturb them, or destroy the
wreck, have overvalued the strength of their position, for this shot
had been aimed at us; we had now plenty of water, so we instantly
weighed, and dropped down the river out of range.  All now remained
quiet until the day dawned, and streaks of dull grey appeared in the
eastern horizon.  There was not a single warm tint in the sky, although
we were in a regular vapour-bath of pestilential effluvia, and were any
thing but cold.  An hour before daylight the fog again sank down on us
even thicker than before, so that every thing was hid from our view
beyond ten paces' distance; but as it drew nearer sunrise, this watery
canopy rose, and gradually evaporated in a dropping mist, until the
gorgeous east once more reassumed its glowing blush, and the stars
sparkled brightly as the fast reddening firmament gave token that day
was at hand.  The sun rose--

"Midge, ahoy," sang out a voice from the bow of a boat, that had on the
instant stuck its snout round the point below us.  Before we could
answer, the yawl, full of enquiring messmates, was alongside.

"Hillo, Master Sprawl--hillo, Master Brail; Lanyard, my boy, what sort
of an afternoon have you spent?--Slept sound, eh?--But why the devil
did you keep blazing away and wasting his Majesty's powder in minute
guns in this way; what _were_ you after the whole night through?" sung
out old Pumpbolt, the master of the Gazelle.

"Come on board, my lad," said Sprawl--"come on board, will ye, and you
shall hear the whole story."

They did so, and after a lengthier explanation than the reader would
willingly listen to, it was determined, reinforced as we now were, that
if we could make out the whereabouts of the fort that had so annoyed
us, we should make a dash at it, even were we to have broken heads in
prospect.  As to attacking the battery in front, where there was no
standing ground, it was utterly out of the question; so, as the tide
was now low ebb, and the slaver nearly high and dry on the bank,
although, in the hole we had dropped into, the felucca was floating
quietly out of cannon-shot, we left her in charge of ten hands, and
crowding the other boats, three in all (the damaged boat having been
repaired, as already mentioned), dropped down with the current along
shore, our whole force amounting to six-and-forty seamen and twenty
marines; and keeping a bright look-out for the smallest gap in the
mangroves that could afford an entrance.  At length we did arrive at
such an opening; it was a narrow creek, about thirty feet broad,
overhung with the everlasting mangrove, which formed an arch overhead
by the weaving of the thickly leaved branches together, utterly
impervious to the sun's rays.  I was in the sternmost boat; the next to
me was commanded by the first lieutenant of the frigate, old Davie
Doublepipe; and as we sculled along in the clear creek, for here it was
translucent as a mountain lake, whatever the water might be in the
river, our boats were touching, stem and stern.  Sprawl, whose
experience of the coast, and, still more, of expeditions of this kind,
greatly surpassed my own, immediately asked me to shift from aft where
I sat, forward to the bow of the boat; the men continuing to pole
along, as there was no room for them to ply their oars.

"I say, Master Brail," quoth he--as soon as we could communicate
without being overheard--"supposing we do carry his position--_cui
bono_, what advantageth it us?  The slaves, which, when the Midge first
saw the polacre, and chased him, were on board, are without question
once more back into cover, and must all have been landed; so if we
could even weigh the hooker, and carry her to Cape Coast, I very much
fear we should be unable to condemn her."

"But the honour and glory?" quoth old Dick.

"Both be--ahem," quoth he; "but if you think it an object to have a
brush, why, come along, my hearties, it is all the day's work."

I was a younger man by ten years than our friend, and, boylike, gloried
in the opportunity; so we again began to scull along the creek,
sheltered by the same umbrageous screen of mangroves, now so luxuriant
that it shut out both sun and light as if it had been a continuous
artificial arbour.  I cannot describe the beauty and coolness of this
shade--water clear and pellucid as crystal under foot; a long distinct
view through forests of naked mangrove stems on each side, while aloft
there was a perfect web of verdure resting on the trelliswork formed by
the interlacing of their bows, which spread out in a delicious covering
over the whole creek.  We dislodged innumerable birds of every variety,
from the tall floating ghostlike crane to the chattering paroquet; and
more than one owl flitted away from us, and flew up through the
branches, until the sun struck him, when, with a _flaff_ and a rustling
_brush_ through the topmost leaves, he came down overhead like a shot;
until, restored by the green twilight, he would recover himself, and
once more sail away along the narrow creek, and disappear round the
corner of it ahead of us.  In one instance, a boy in the bow struck one
down with a boat-hook, so that the bird fell against Lieutenant
Sprawl's head as he sat in the stern-sheets of the boat ahead.

"Hillo, Brail, my man," quoth he, "where away--what _are_ you after?"

This narrow canal was absolutely alive with fish--they surrounded us on
all sides; and although we could discern some dark suspicious-looking
figures at the bottom, which we conjectured to be alligators; still
there was no perceptible motion amongst them, and we continued to pull
quietly until the head-most boat took the ground for a moment, and the
others closed upon her.

"What is that?" sung out old Bloody Politeful.

"Lord only knows," answered the midshipman beside him, as a loud
snorting noise, approaching to a roar, a sound that hovered between the
blowing of a whale and the bellowing of a bull half choked in a marsh,
echoed along the green arch.

"Now, what customer can that be?" quoth your humble servant.

"A hippopotamus," said one of the launch's crew; and before we could
hear any thing more, an animal, with a coarse black leather skin, and a
most formidable head, about the size of a small Highland cow (it must
have been but a young one), floundered down the creek past us, stirring
up the mud as thick as tar all round about--but we had other work in
hand, so he escaped without a shot.  We pulled on, and presently the
mangroves settled down right across the narrow creek, twisting their
snake-like branches together into an impervious net.  Ahead, our course
was thus most effectually stopped by this ligneous portcullis, but
close to the obstacle a small muddy path branched off to the right, and
we determined to follow it.

It appeared a good deal poached, as if from the passing of a number of
people recently along it; and we had not proceeded above twenty yards
when we came upon a spare studding-sail boom, to which some heavy
weight had been attached, for two slings were fastened round it,
showing, by the straight and wire-like appearance of the rope, how
severe the strain had been; the spar itself was broken in the midst, as
if the weight attached to it had been more than it could bear.

"Aha," thought I, "we are getting near the earth of the fox any
how--the scent is high."

We carried on.  The path became more and more cut up, but no other
evidences of our being on the proper trail occurred; and as we could
not fall in with a tree tall enough to afford us a glimpse of the lay
of the land about us, had we ascended it, we had no alternative but to
stand on.

"No chance of doing any good here," grumbled an old quartermaster,
close to where I was struggling nearly knee-deep in mud.  "We shall
catch nothing but fever here."

"Hillo!" said a little middy, as we braced up sharp round a
right-angled corner of the pestiferous path--"hillo, the road stops
here;" and so it certainly appeared to do about pistol-shot, or nearer,
ahead of us, where a mound of fresh cut prickly bushes was heaped up
about six feet high right across the path.  Whether this was a casual
interruption thrown up by the natives, or an impediment cast in our way
by our concealed _amigos_, I could not tell.  A loud barking of dogs
was now heard ahead of us--presently a halt was called, and the word
was passed along to see that the priming of the muskets was dry and
sound; and all of us instinctively drew his cutlass a finger's breadth
or so from its sheath, to see that it would come readily to one's hand,
should need be.  The first lieutenant, who, disdaining the common ship
cutlass, had buckled on a most enormous Andrea Ferrara with a huge
rusty basket-hilt, advanced boldly towards the enclosure, when a
smooth-faced, very handsome dark young man suddenly raised his head
above the green defence--"_Que quieren ustedes, amigos mios_?"

"What's that to you?" rejoined Sprawl; "give us a clear road, my
darling, or maybe we shall cooper you, after a very comical fashion."

We had scarcely uttered the words when a discharge of grape burst from
the green mound, crashing amongst the branches, and sending them down
in a shower on our heads; while all the neighbouring trees, like
Jacob's wands, became, in the twinkling of an eye, patched with white
spots, from the rasping of the shot.

"Forward!" shouted Davie Doublepipe--"follow me, men!" when--rattle--a
platoon of musketry was fired at us.  The grape had missed, from a
wrong elevation of the gun; not so the small arms--one of our party was
shot dead and three wounded; but the spring was nevertheless made.  We
scrambled across the brushwood that had been heaped on the road, and to
the top of the stockade, about six feet high, that it masked, and
presently found ourselves in the presence of thirty determined fellows,
who were working like fiends in the endeavour to slew round seven
eighteen-pound carronades, that had been mounted on a stage of loose
planks, and pointed towards the river.  Apparently they had been unable
to accomplish this with more than one, the gun that had just been
fired, which in the recoil had slid off the platform, and was now
useless, from sinking in the semisolid black soil, two of the others
having already, in the attempt to train them round on us, capsized and
sunk right out of sight in it.  So aid from the cannon they now had
none; but never did men show a more daring front--as they stood their
ground, exchanging blow for blow most manfully.

The fort, or battery, was a stockaded enclosure, about fifty yards
square.  Towards the river face, before we attempted to turn it, the
guns had been mounted on a stage of loose planks, a most unstable
foundation, from resting on running mud.  The brushwood between them
and the river grew thick and close, and opposite the muzzle of each
cannon the leaves were scorched and blackened.  The wooden platform
extended about twelve feet in breadth landward, but beyond it the whole
inside of the fort was soft black mud, through which, on the side
farthest from the river, protruded the stumps of the haggled brushwood,
where it had been cleared by the hatchet; while branches were thickly
strewed on the surface nearer the guns, to afford a footing across it.
These branches, however, had been removed for a space of ten feet, at
the spot we boarded at, where the slimy ground appeared poached into a
soft paste, so that no footing might be afforded to an attacking force.

The desperadoes already mentioned, were all armed with boarding pikes,
or cutlasses, while several had large brass bell-mouthed _trabucos_, or
blunderbusses, which threw five or six musket-balls at a discharge.
Most of them were naked to their trowsers, and they all wore a blue,
yellow, or red sash, drawn tight round the waist, through which several
had pistols stuck; while their heads were covered, in general, by a
blue or red cloth cap, like a long stocking, to the end of which was
fastened a thick silk or woollen tassel, either hanging down the back,
or falling over the side of the head.  Some wore shirts of a striped
woollen stuff, common amongst the Biscayan boatmen.  One elderly man, a
large athletic Hercules of a fellow, bareheaded, and very bald; with
his trowsers rolled up to his knees, displaying his dark brawny legs
and naked feet, dressed in one of the aforesaid striped shirts, and
wearing a broad-brimmed, narrow conical-crowned hat, with a flaming red
riband tied round it close to the spreading brim, stood in advance of
the others, with a _trabuco_ in his hand, the piece held in a way that
it might be instantly levelled at us.

These ferocious-looking rascals had most formidable auxiliaries, in
three Spanish blood-hounds, as yet held in leather-leashes; but who
were jumping and struggling, open-mouthed, and barking, and panting to
get at us, until they were almost strangled; their eyes straining in
their heads, or rather starting from their sockets, as they champed and
dashed the foam right and left from their coal-black muzzles.  They
were indeed superb creatures, all three of a bright bay colour, and
about the height of a tall English stag-hound; but much stronger, as if
there had been a cross of the bull-dog in their blood.  The moment
Lieutenant Sprawl stuck his very remarkable snout over the stockade,
several of us having scrambled up abreast of him, the man already
mentioned as apparently the leader of the party hailed--

"_Que quieren ustedes--somos Españoles--y unde esta la guerra entre
ustedes i nosotros._"

He was answered by a volley from all our pieces, and simultaneously, in
the struggle to get over, half-a-dozen of us tumbled down, right into
the soft mud; those who had the luck to fall on their feet sank to
their knees in an instant, whilst several who fell head foremost, left
a beautiful cast of their phrenological developements in the mire.  We
fought with all our might, you may imagine, to extricate ourselves, but
two out of the group were instantly pinned in their clay moulds, by the
boarding-pikes of the slaver's crew, and died miserably where they
fell, while several others were wounded by shot; but more of our
fellows continued to pour in after us, and there we soon were, thirty
men at the fewest, struggling and shouting, and blazing away, using the
dead bodies of our fallen comrades as stepping-stones to advance over;
while about fifteen more, as a reserve under little Binnacle, had
perched themselves on the top of the stockade in our rear, and kept
pouring in a most destructive fire over our heads.  The yells of the
men, and the barking and worrying of the dogs, who had now been let
loose, and who were indiscriminately attacking whoever was next them,
were appalling in the highest degree.

The bipeds whoso manfully opposed us, it was our duty and our glory to
encounter; but the dogs were the very devil,--altogether out of our
reckoning.  It was curious to see those who feared not the face of man,
hanging back, and looking behind them to see if the coast was clear for
a bolt, when attacked by one of the bloodhounds.  So our antagonists,
although so largely overmatched in numbers, had, from the ferocity of
their allies, and the soundness of their footing, the advantage over
us, and made good their position on the wooden stage, notwithstanding
all our attempts to dislodge them; and they were in the act of getting
another of the carronades, no doubt loaded with grape, slewed round and
pointed at us, when five marines, who had scrambled through the brake,
took them in flank, and attacked them from the sea face, with
unexampled fury.  The serjeant of the party instantly shot the leader
of the Spanish crew in the back, between the shoulders, when he made a
staggering rush, and to my utter consternation bore me to the ground,
and then fell forward right on the top of me.  Oh for the mahogany desk
jammed into the pit of my stomach, thought I; all your accounts are
closed, Master Benjie.  Still in my dreams I often fancy that I feel
the convulsive clutches of the dying man, and the hot blood gurgling
from his mouth, down my neck, and the choking gasp, and the death
quiver.

I was not stunned however, although I must have been overlaid some
time, for when I wriggled myself clear of the horrible load, our
fellows had already gained the platform, led by old Davie Doublepipe,
who was laying about him with his rusty weapon like a Paladin of old;
at one moment shredding away showers of twigs from the branches that
overhung us; at another inflicting deep and deadly gashes on his
antagonists; his sword raining blood, as he whirled it round his head
flashing like lightning; while his loud growl, like the roaring of the
surf after a gale, alternated rapidly with his _tootletoo_, that gushed
shrill and sharp from out the infernal noise and smoke and blaze of the
tumult.  The Gazelles and Midges had now closed hand to hand with their
antagonists, and the next minute the survivors of the latter fairly
turned tail, and fled along a narrow path, equally muddy as the one we
had entered by; where many of them stuck up to the knees, and were
there shot down by our people, but no attempt was made to follow them.
Several men had been terribly torn by the bloodhounds, who, when their
masters had fled, noble brutes as they were, stood gasping and barking;
and handling at us, at the entrance of the opening.  thus covering
their retreat;--spouting out in abound or two towards us every now and
then, and immediately retiring, and yelling and barking at the top of
their pipes.  I was going to fire at one of them, when the Scotch
corporal of marines, already introduced on the scene, took the liberty
of putting in his oar.  "Beg pardon, Mr Brail, but let abee for let
abee with mad dogs and daft folk, is an auld but a very true adage."  I
looked with an enquiring eye at the poor fellow, who appeared worn to
the bone with illness, so that I was puzzled to understand how Sprawl
had brought him with him; but I took his hint, and presently the canine
rear-guard beat a retreat, and all was quiet for a time.

We now spiked the cannon and capsized them into the mud, where they
instantly sank, and I had time to look around on the scene of conflict.
There lay two of our people stark and stiff, countersunk into the soft
soil, which was gradually settling over the bodies in a bloody mire;
while four wounded men were struggling to extricate themselves, and
endeavouring to attain the hard footing of the platform of planks.
Three of them, with the assistance of their mess-mates, did accomplish
this, but the fourth was too badly hurt, and too faint from the loss of
blood, to persevere, and in despair threw himself back, gasping on the
bloody quagmire.

"What is that?" said I, while half a dozen dropping shots sparkled out
from beneath the thick jungle, and at the very instant one of the
boat-keepers stuck his head over the stockade.

"The tide has left us, sir, and the mouth of the creek has not six
inches of water in it, sir.  The boats must stick hard and fast until
next flood."

Startling enough this.  What was to be done?  To retreat, for the time,
was out of the question, so we had no chance but in a forward
demonstration.

"After these miscreants, men," cried old Sprawl, having previously
ordered ten hands back to cover the boats--"after them, and drive them
from the jungle."

"Hurrah!"  We shoved along the narrow path through which the enemy had
vanished, and the first we overtook was a poor devil shot through the
neck, writhing in agony, and endeavouring to extricate himself from the
slough.  He was thrust through on the instant, as unceremoniously as if
he had been a crushed beetle.  A little farther on we encountered in
another small by-track that took away to the left, three others,
evidently part of the gang who had been peppering us from beneath the
covert of the bushes.  These were shot down as unceremoniously where
they stood.  I cannot forget the imploring glances of the poor fellows
as they vainly beseeched our mercy, and the fearful sight of their
stretching themselves out, and falling crash back amongst the branches
when we fired.  Two of them seemed to fall at once quite dead amongst
the bloody leaves; but the third, shrieking aloud, had wrestled himself
a fathom or two into the brake before he received his quietus from a
marine, who walked close up to him, and shot him deliberately through
the heart.  Still we heard the shouts of the rest of the party who had
retreated, and were now well ahead of us, and we pushed on in
pursuit--when all at once, as if I had been struck by the levin-brand,
a flash of light blazed across my eyes, and I came to the ground by the
run.




CHAPTER III.

THE MIDGE IN THE HORNET'S NEST.

When I came to myself I was sitting in the small muddy path through
which our antagonists had been driven.  About a fathom from me, partly
hid by the mangrove bushes, lay the dead body of one of the white crew
of the polacre.  He had fallen on his back across a stout branch, that
shot out horizontally from one of the trees at a height of about a foot
from the ground, so that, while his feet and legs rested on the soft
black alluvial soil on one side of it, his head, with the face turned
upwards, and relaxed arms, hung down on the other.  He was dressed in
the striped shirt already mentioned, largely open at the breast, and
wide white petticoat trowsers, that reached to the knee, made of some
strong cotton stuff of the same fabric as the India salampore, so that
the garment looked like a Greek kilt.  It was fastened at the waist by
a red silk sash, one end of which hung down over the branch across
which he lay, apparently saturated and heavy with black blood, that
gave it the appearance of a large purple tassel.  His collapsed loins,
where he was doubled over the branch, looked as thin and attenuated as
if he had been shot in two, and his prominent chest and lower
extremities merely connected by his clothing.  His feet and legs, as
well as his arms, were bare--his shirt-sleeves extending only three
inches below his shoulder; and it was a fearful sight to look on the
death-blue colour of the muscles, which no longer stood out in
well-defined and high relief, but had fallen and assumed the rounded
appearance of a woman's limbs.  The crown of his head touched the
ground, resting on his long black hair, that had been worn turned up
into a knot, but was now spread out in a rich tress, a foot beyond him.
He had ear-rings in his ears, and a broad gold crucifix tied round his
neck by a cord of spun hair--Alas for her whose raven locks composed
the strands of it!  His mouth was open, but his eyes were closed as if
he slept; and a small coal black tuft of hair on his chin, under his
nether lip, startled one, from its conspicuousness in contrast with the
deathly pallor of his face.  He was a very handsome youth, yet the
features inverted, as his head hung down, assumed from this
circumstance an expression so unusual, yet so soft and so touchingly
melancholy, that although I had often looked on death before, even in
my own miserable plight I could not help noticing it, and being moved
by it.  There was no wound that I could see, but thick black gouts were
slowly trickling from the white fresh splintered end of the branch that
had been split off in the rush, across which he lay; but this was only
noticeable at the splinter-mark, the sluggish stream being invisible,
while it crept from his body along the dark green bark of the limb of
the mangrove-tree.  A small pyramid had already been formed on the
ground, directly below the end of the branch, by the dropping of the
coagulating blood.  The whole scene was pervaded by the faint
mysterious light of the subdued sunbeams, as they struggled through the
screen of motionless leaves above; while the dead corse slept in the
deep cold shadow below, that to the eye of one suddenly withdrawn from
the glare of the tropical noontide, appeared to approach absolute
darkness; still a soft green ray, or _pensil_, like moonlight piercing
the thick woven foliage of a summer arbour, fell on and floated over
the face and one of the naked arms, until the still features appeared
to become radiant of themselves--as if they had been blanched by it
into the self-luminous whiteness of fresh hewn alabaster.

It was in truth a most piteous sight, and as the image of my aged
parent rose up, in my extremity, before my mind's eye at the moment, I
held up my feeble hands to heaven, and prayed fervently unto the
Almighty to bless her declining years; and, if that my race were indeed
run, and now in very truth my place was to know me no more, that my
sins might, for Christ's sake, be forgiven me.  "Alas, alas!" thought
I, bowed down by intense suffering to the very dust, "may he too not
have had a mother?"

For a minute, as I slowly recovered from the stunning effects of the
shot, I sat observing all this, and pressing the torn skin of my
forehead to my temples with one hand, whilst with the other I kept
clearing away the blood as it flowed into my eyes; but by the time I
had perfectly recovered my recollection, my sympathy vanished, all my
thoughts became absorbed, and my energies, small as they were at the
time, excited in almost a supernatural degree by the actual approach of
a hideous, and, in my helpless condition, probably the most appalling
danger that a human being could be threatened with.

For a second or two I had noticed that the branch across which the dead
Spaniard lay, was slightly moved now and then, and that some object was
advancing from beneath it, out of the thicket beyond.  I was not long
left in doubt, for one of the noble bloodhounds now dragged himself
into the light, and wriggled from amongst the mangroves to within a
fathom of me.  At first when he struggled from beneath his master's
body, he began to lick his face and hands, and then threw his head back
with a loud whine, as if disappointed in his expectation of some
acknowledgment.  Alas! none came; and after another vain attempt, pain
seemed to drive the creature furious, for he seized the arm next me,
that he had been licking the minute before, by the wrist, making the
dead bones crackle between his teeth in his agony.  All at once he
began to yell and bark, and at intervals turned his fierce eyes on me,
then swung his head violently back, and again howled most piteously.

All this time I could hear the loud shouting of our people in the
distance, and a scattering shot now and then, but the work nearer home
was more than sufficient to occupy me; for the dog, after another
moment of comparative repose, suddenly raised himself on his fore-paws;
for the first time I could see that he had been shot through the spine,
near the flank, so that his two hind-legs were utterly powerless, and
trailing on the ground.

He scrambled on a foot or two nearer--again all was still, and he lay
quiet with his nose resting on the ground, as if he had been watching
his prey; but pain appeared suddenly to overcome him again, as,
stretching out his fore-paws straight before him, and throwing his head
back, he set up the most infernal howl that ear ever tingled to.
"Merciful powers! can he mean to attack me?" thought I, as the fierce
creature left the dead body, and reared himself on his forelegs, with
open mouth, and tongue hanging out, uttering the most fearful cries,
between a fierce bark and a howl, and again attempting to drag himself
towards me.  I made a desperate effort to rise, but could not; and in
the prospect of so dreadful a death, I shouted for aid, as loud as my
feebleness would let me.  Once more suffering seemed to overcome the
creature's ferocity, and he stopped and yelled again.

Although I was still in some degree bewildered, and almost blinded from
the blood that continued to flow down my forehead, and the flap of skin
that covered my left eye, so as effectually to seal it, acting as a
deadlight as it were, still, for dear life, I grasped my cutlass--alas,
the blade was broken short off by the hilt!  My left hand then
mechanically clutched my belt where my pistol hung--"Ah, it _is_ there,
any how."  I instantly changed the broken blade into my other hand, and
with the coolness of despair cocked the pistol in my right, and lay
still, awaiting the approach of my fierce antagonist, under the
tremendous persuasion that my fate was inevitable if I missed him.  As
I looked in breathless dread, he suddenly gave a scrambling wallop
towards me--"I am done for--God have mercy on me, and receive my soul!"
Another scramble.  I felt his hissing hot breath; and the foam that he
champed from his fangs, as he tossed his head from side to side in a
paroxysm of rage and pain, fell like flakes of hot sulphur over my
face.  "Now is the time!"  I thrust the pistol into his mouth, and
pulled the trigger.  Almighty powers! it flashed in the pan!  With my
remaining strength I endeavoured to thrust it down his throat, as he
coughed up blood and froth into my face; he shook his head, clutched
the weapon in his teeth, and then threw it from him, as if in
disappointment that it had not been part and portion of his enemy; and
again made a snap at my shoulder.  I struck at him with my broken
cutlass--he seemed not to feel the blow--and throwing myself back as
far as I could, I shrieked in my extremity to that God whom I had so
often slighted and forgotten, for mercy to my miserable soul.  Crack--a
bullet whizzed past me.  The dog gave a long, loud howl, gradually
sinking into a low murmur as his feet slid from under him, and his head
lay open-jawed on the mud--a quivering kick of his feet--and he was
dead--as I nearly was through fear.

"Hillo," quoth old Clinker, the master-at-arms, one of those who had
come up from the boats, "who is this fighting with beasts at Ephesus,
eh?"  The moment he recognised me, the poor fellow made his apology,
although, Heaven knows, none was required.

"Beg pardon, sir; I little thought it was you, Mr Brail, who was so
near being worried by that vile beast."

I breathed again.  The bullet that had so nearly proved my quietus at
the commencement of the action, had struck me on the right temple, and,
glancing, had ran along my whole forehead, ploughing up the skin, until
it reached the left eye, where it detached a large flap, that, as
already mentioned, hung down by a tag over my larboard daylight; fairly
blinding me on that side.

"Here, Quinton, and Mornington," said Clinker, to two of the people,
who followed him, "here, lend a hand to bring Mr Brail along, will ye?"
They raised me on my legs, and gave me a mouthful of grog from a
canteen, and we proceeded, following the voices of our shipmates.
Comforted by the cordial, I found my strength return in some measure;
and when I was once satisfied that no bones were broken, that I was in
fact only and simply _kilt_, my spirits revived, and before we overtook
our allies, having bathed my wound with rum, and bound it with my
handkerchief, I was able to walk without support, and in a certain
degree to take care of myself.

The path continued for about half a mile farther, and in all that route
we no longer heard or saw any indications of our comrades.  "Why, there
is no use in all this," said old Clinker; "they must have taken another
direction, so we had better return, and wait the young flood to enable
us to back out of the scrape."

I considered this the wisest advice that could be given, and
right-about-face was the word, when a scapegrace of a marine, who had
straggled from the main body, suddenly came running at the top of his
speed from the advance, and sung out,--"Lord, sir and messmates, come
here, come here!"

"Why, what do you see?" responded Clinker.

"Why, sir, here is the queerest sight I ever see'd in all my born days."

"What is it, man? body o' me, what is it?" exclaimed the old
quarter-master, as we bowled along, following the Jolly; the fellow
gave no answer, but skipped on before us like a dancing-master.
Presently we arrived at an open space, situated at the head of the
tortuous mangrove-fringed creek that we had landed in.  The channel of
it was dry, all above the crook, about fifty yards from us, where it
bent towards the east, and full of black slimy mud, over-arched
entirely by the snake-like roots and branches of the mangroves; whose
upper branches, as usual, supported a thick mat of green leaves, while
all below was bare naked convolutions of green weather-stained stems
and branches.  The muddy canal seemed to end at this spot, under the
dark shade of the bushes.  Imbedded in its obscene channel, and hauled
close up to the head of the creek, lay a large Eboe canoe, about fifty
feet long; the bottom hollowed out of one single tree, but there was a
washstreak of some kind of hardwood plank, so as to raise the gunwale
about a foot above the ledge of the original vessel.  The two bamboo
masts were unshipped, and stowed amidships on the thwarts, and above
twenty paddles were ranged uprightly, with the blades resting on the
bottom, on each side of the masts.

There was a heavy log of unhewn wood, about thirty feet long, laid
across the head of the creek, where it terminated; on which three grey
parrots were clawing up and down, fastened by the legs with pieces of
twine.

Immediately adjoining was an open area of about fifty yards in
diameter--the soil appearing to have been mixed with white ashes, and
then baked, or rammed down into a hard floor.  This open space was
closed in by a thick forest of cashaw-trees on the land side, through
which several paths opened; while on every other, except at the head of
the creek, it was surrounded by mangrove jungle.  In the centre stood a
native house, a long, low, one-story, mud building, about forty feet in
length, by fifteen wide, thatched with the leaves of the dwarf palm.
It had one large aperture in the roof amidships, raised a foot or two
by piled turf, from which curled up a thick blue smoke; but there was
no opening on the side we approached it by, beyond a low door, not
above three feet high; indeed, the eaves of the house itself were
scarcely four feet from the ground.

Right in front of us, and precisely opposite the door, ensconced in a
curious nondescript chair of wickerwork, sat, very drunk apparently,
and more than half asleep, a ponderous middle-aged negro, dressed in a
most primitive fashion; his sole article of clothing being a common
woollen blanket, with a hole cut in the middle for his head to pass
through, while the sides were fastened together with wooden skewers,
which effectually confined his arms; so that there he was, all blanket
and head, and sound asleep, or pretending to be so, although the sun
shone down into the cleared space with a fierceness that would have
broiled the brains of any other man, had they been covered by a common
skull.  We were all speedily congregated round this beauty; there was
no one in attendance on him, and we had no means of judging of his
quality.

"I say, my good man," quoth Lieutenant Sprawl, "pray, did you see any
white men--Spaniards--pass this way?"

The sleeper appeared slowly to recover his faculties; he first stared
at the interrogator, then at old Dick Lanyard and me, and then at our
people.  He wished to seem, or really was, overcome with surprise.
Presently--the first lieutenant having for a moment left him, to look
around and reconnoitre the lay of the land--a little reefer, Joe Peake
by name, stole up to him, and whether or no the aforesaid mid had taken
a small pull at his canteen, I cannot tell, but he rattled out in the
ear of the torpid savage, "I say, my sleeping beauty, if you don't tell
us in a twinkling whereabouts these Spanish raggamuffins are stowed
away, by Saint Patrick, but I will make free to waken you with the
point of this cutlass here, and in a way by no means ceremonious at
all, at all;" and suiting the action to the word, he gave the sable
Morpheus a very sufficing progue with the point of his weapon, about
the region of the midriff, which instantaneously extracted a yell,
worthy of any Bengal tiger that I had ever tumbled up to see.
Presently the howling subsided into articulate sounds, but not one of
the party could make any thing ship-shape out of the barbarous
exclamations.

"Now, my darlin'," continued wee middy, "try toder tack, dear;" and he
again excited the savage's corporeals, after a very sharp fashion, with
the same instrument, and the howl was louder than before.

"Now, may the devil fly away with me," quoth the imp, waxing wroth,
"but I will blow your brains out, you drunken thief of the world, if
you don't give me a legitimate reply--spake, you ill-bred spalpeen,
you----Answer me in English, you scoundrel;" whereupon, to our very
great surprise indeed, out spoke our sable acquaintance.

"Hillo, where de debil is I--who you, eh?  What you wantee here?  I hab
no slave to give you.  De Caridad, him do get every one I get.  So,
good men, go to hell all of you--do--very mosh go to hell--do."

The barbarian again fell back on his seat, either asleep, or feigning
to be so, and began to snore like a rhinoceros.  By this time Davie
Doublepipe's attention was attracted to a noise within the house.
"Now, Master Blueskin," said he, "have the kindness to open the door
there;" then, as if suddenly recollecting himself, in a voice of
thunder he exclaimed--"Surround the house, men.  Shoot any one who
tries to escape."

This seemed to arouse our sluggish friend, who immediately got up, and
staggered a few paces towards the margin of the wood, where a most
remarkable object met our eyes.  It was a fetish hut or temple,
composed of a shed about ten feet square, raised on four bamboos.  From
the eaves or thatch of the roof, to the ground, might have measured ten
feet; and three feet below the roof there was a platform rigged, on
which sat the most unearthly and hideous production of the hand of man
that I had ever witnessed.  It was a round, pot-bellied, wooden figure,
about three feet high, with an enormous head, a mouth from ear to ear,
and little, diminutive, spindly legs and arms.  A human skull, with the
brain scooped out, but the red scalp, and part of the hair, and the
flesh of the face adhering to it, while the lower jaw had been torn
away, was hung round this horrible-looking image's neck.  Immediately
beneath there was a heap of white smouldering cinders, as if the embers
of a large fire had been swept together, with three or four white bones
protruding from the fissures in the cake of white ashes; which, from
their peculiar shape and extraordinary whiteness, gave me some
shuddering qualms as to the kind of living creature they had belonged
to.  The whole space round the heap, under the platform on which the
Fetish stood, as well as the posts of the rude and horrible temple
itself, was sprinkled with fresh black spots like newly dried blood--I
doubted exceedingly whether the same had ever circulated through the
hearts of bulls or goats.

"Now, my good man, bestir you, and let us into the house," said I, by
this time renovated by another small pull at a marine's canteen.

The surly savage, who, in his attempt to escape, had fallen headlong,
and had all this while lain as motionless as a coiled-up hedgehog, now
slowly opened his eyes, and peered at me with a sort of drunken
gravity--but he did not speak.  I took the cutlass from the
midshipman--"Now, my man, if you don't speak, it is spitting you on
this same that I will be after;" and accordingly, to corroborate my
word, I made a most furious demonstration with the naked weapon, when
he sung out, in great terror, "Stop, massa, me is Sergeant Quacco of de
-- West India, and not a savage nigir natural to dis dam country.  Long
live Kin Shorge, massa!"

"Why," said Lieutenant Sprawl, "how came you here, my beauty?--tell us
that."

"Surely," quoth blackie; "no objection in de wide world, but"----

Here our people had forced the door of the long shed, on the opposite
side from where we were, and we could hear from their shouts that they
were now in the interior of the house.  This entirely discomposed our
new friend, and seemed to sober him all on a sudden, if, indeed, the
appearance of inebriety had not been from the first assumed for the
occasion.  "Ah, dere--all is known--all known.  Call off your people,
gentlemen--call off your people.  Oh, what is dat?"

Here several pistol-shots were fired in the house, and the clink of
steel was heard, and loud shouting, in Spanish as well as English.

"Who are in the shed?" Lanyard called out,--"Who are concealed there?"

"How de debil can I tell?" said the man--"How de debil can I say?"--and
he started from his chair, where he had again bestowed himself, and
made a bolt, with intent to escape.--I tripped up his heels.

"Now, you scoundrel," said I, as the fellow lay sprawling on the
ground--"confess who are concealed there, or I will run you through
where you lie."

"I will confess," shrieked he--"I will confess--de crew of dat dam
polacre is dere, and her cargo of one hundred fifty slave, is dere--so
sink, burn, and destroy dem all, if dat will pleasure massa; but don't
cut my troat please, massa--don't, I beg you, cut my troat--God bless
you, massa--Oh--oh--no cut my troat, please, good massa?"

My attention was here attracted by what was going on elsewhere.
Leaving the vagabond where he sat, I turned a step or two towards the
long barn-like building.

The noise in the interior continued.  "Hillo," sung out the first
lieutenant--"Hillo, men, what are you after?  Haul off--come out, will
ye--come out;" and he began to thunder at the low door, with his
pillar-like trams, each of which might have made a very passable
battering-ram.

The uproar increased.  "Zounds!" said he, "the fellows are mad;" and he
started off round the northernmost end of the shed, finding that all
attempts to force the door on the side next us proved futile.
Presently the topman, and two marines, who had remained beside the
negro, also bolted to "see the fun on the other side of the house," and
left me alone with the savage.

It was now "the uproar, with variations," as old Bloody Politeful's two
voices swelled the row.  I looked at the negro, and weak and worn-out
as I was, I began to feel rather comical.  "Can I manage him, in case
he shows fight?" thought I.  He seemed to be taking the same measure
himself; for by this time he had gathered himself up, and advancing a
stride or two from his seat or bench, he appeared to balance himself,
and weigh his gigantic proportions against my comparatively tiny thews
and sinews.  All at once, like a tiger about to make his spring, he
drew suddenly back, and crouched; evidently concentrating all his
energies.  Time to make a demonstration, thought I; and thereupon drew
a pistol from my belt, and opening the pan, slapped it with my right
hand, to see that the priming was all right, and in immediate
communication with the charge in the barrel.  He looked rapidly, but
keenly, all round, and then at me.  I grasped the weapon firmly in my
right hand.  He rose--upset the bench on which he sat, in a twinkling
screwed out a leg of it, and was in the very act of making a blow at
me, when the shouts and yells in the long shed increased to an infernal
degree of vivacity, and a hot sharp crackling, and a thick stifling
smoke, that burst in white wreaths from the corners of the building,
arrested his uplifted arm.  "You infamous renegade, if you don't lay
down the leg of that stool, I will, on the credit of a Kilkenny man, by
the mother's side, send a bullet through your breadbasket--If I don't,
never fear me."

He had now made up his mind, and advancing, nothing daunted, made a
spring and a blow at my head, which, if I had not dodged, would have
sent me to answer for many a sin unrepented of; as it was, it descended
with great force on my left shoulder, but on the instant I shot him
through the muscle of his uplifted arm, and down he tumbled, roaring
like the very devil.  I had started up the instant I pulled the
trigger.  The door of the long building, at that very instant of time,
gave way, and out rushed five white men--evidently part of the crew of
the polacre brig--followed by our people.  Weak as I was, I stood up to
the headmost; and this appeared to have quelled him, for he instantly
threw down his arms.  The crackling of the fire continued; bursts of
smoke spouted from the roof; presently they were intermingled with
bright sparks, and the yells arose even louder, if possible, than
before, from the inside; when out rushed our people, headed by the
redoubtable Davie Doublepipe himself.

"Hillo, Brail," said he, "you seem to have your own share of it to-day:
why, what _has_ come over you?--who has wounded you?"

"That black rascal there."

"The devil!" quoth Lanyard; "shall we immolate the savage where he
lies?"

"No, no--attend to what is going on in the other end of the house--for
Godsake mind what may befall there!"

With the gallant fellow it was a word and a blow--"Here,--here--try
back, my fine fellows, try back."

The yells increased.  "Merciful Providence!" exclaimed Mr Sprawl, as he
saw his people recoil from the heat and flame, "what is to be done?
These poor creatures will be roasted alive where they are made fast."
Our party turned; made as if they would have re-entered the house, but
the scorching fire kept them back.  The cries were now mixed with low
moans and suffocating coughs, and presently a string of miserable naked
savages appeared streaming out of the door, as fast as they could run,
as if flying from instant death--men, old and young, well-grown
children of both sexes, and several elderly women--the ancients
staggering along after the more nimble as fast as their feebler
strength would admit.  They rushed forth, all as fast as they could,
never halting, until they had landed up to the waist in the muddy
creek, and an interval of half a minute elapsed, when several of the
women made signs that there were still some of the miserable creatures
within; and, indeed, this was but too sadly vouched for, by the shrill
and heartrending cries that continued to issue from the burning shed,
as if women and children had been confined in some part of it, and
unable to escape.  Old Bloody Politeful was at this time standing in
the middle of the open space, with the four middies, Pumpbolt, and
about ten men grouped around him; the rest being employed in various
ways--some in an unavailing attempt to extinguish the fire--the others
in guarding the prisoners, when all at once the first lieutenant sung
out--"Men, there are women and children burning there--follow me."  He
spoke to British seamen--could he have said more?  And away they rushed
after their heroic leader, stumbling over each other in their anxiety
to succour the poor helpless beings within.  A minute of most intense
suspense followed, when upwards of a dozen women rushed out from the
flaming hut, sheltering, with their bent bodies and naked arms, their
helpless infants from the sparks, and fire, and falling timbers; and
even after they had escaped, and had couched at our feet, the cries and
groans from amongst the burning mass too fearfully evinced that numbers
of our fellow-creatures, in all likelihood the most helpless of the
party, were still in jeopardy, nay, in very truth, were at that instant
giving up the ghost.  Our crew did all they could to get the remainder
of the poor creatures out, but many perished in the flames.

About fifty human beings, chiefly women, were saved, and placed,
huddled together, in the centre of the open space; presently several of
the white Spaniards, who had held on in the shed amidst flame and
smoke, that I thought more than sufficient to have suffocated any man
of woman born, started off into the woods, and disappeared, all to the
five whom we had seized, and who were placed beside, and secured along
with the captive blacks.  Those we had taken were surly, fierce-looking
bravoes; who, when asked any questions as to the name and character of
their vessel, only smiled savagely, as much as to say--"_Our_ vessel!
where is she _now_?  You are none the better for _her_ at all events!"

"Brail, my dear," said Lieutenant Sprawl, "since you stand pilot, what
is to be done?  Had we not better be off with our white prisoners while
the play is good?"

"If the tide will let us," said I; "but the boats as yet are high and
dry in the creek, and we have lost the only opportunity that offered
for burning the polacre; had we confined ourselves to that object, and
kept the boats afloat, we might have accomplished it where she lies at
low water."

"Better as it is," rejoined Sprawl--"better as it is; we found no
slaves on board, and might have got into a scrape had we set fire to
her in cold blood.--No, no! let us be off, and try and launch the
boats.  Here, men, secure your prisoners; shall we carry the black
Broker--this respectable resetter of human beings--with us, Brail--eh?"

"Why, we had better," said I; "we may get some information out of the
vagabond; so kick him up, Moses;"--he was at this moment lying on his
back, again shamming a trance--"up with him, pique him with your
boarding pike, my man."

The seaman I had addressed did as he was desired; but the fellow was
now either dead-drunk, or had sufficient nerve to control any
expression of pain, for the deuced hard thumps and sharp progues he
received, produced no apparent effect.  He lay like a log through them
all; even the pain of the wound in his arm seemed insufficient to keep
him awake.

"Why, what is that--do you hear that?" said Lanyard, in great alarm;
for several dropping shots now rattled in the direction of the boats.
All was still for a minute, and every ear was turned to catch the
sound, during which time we distinctly heard in the distance a loud
voice hail,--

"Come out from beneath the bushes there, you villains, or we shall fire
a volley."

Again there was a long pause--a horn was sounded--then another--then a
wild confused yell, mingled with which the musketry again breezed up,
and we could hear, from the shouts of our people, that the covering
party at the boats had been assailed.  When the first shot was fired,
the black resetter lifted his head, anxiously, as if to listen; but
seeing my eyes were fixed on him, he instantly dropped it again.  But
the instant he heard the negro horns, the noise of their onset, and the
renewal of the firing, he started to his legs, as active as a lynx; and
before any of us could gather our senses about us, he was on the verge
of the wood; when all at once a thought seemed to come across him; he
stopped, and hung in the wind for a moment, as if irresolute whether to
bolt or turn back.  At this moment one of our people let drive at him,
but missed him, although the ball nipped off a dry branch close above
his head.  He instantly ran and laid hold of one of the pillars of the
frame that supported the abominable little idol.  Another shot was
fired, when down tumbled his godship on the head of his worshipper, who
caught the image by the legs, and seeing some of our people rushing to
seize him, he let go his hold of the upright, and whirling the figure
round, holding on by its legs, he let drive with it at the man nearest
him, and dropped him like a shot.  He then bolted out of sight, through
one of the several muddy paths that opened into the mangrove thicket
landward.

"No time to be lost, my lads," whistled old Davie; "keep
together;"--then, in his thorough bass, "Don't throw away a shot; so
now bring along your prisoners, and let us fall back on the
boats----that's it--march the Dons to the front--shove on, my fine
fellows--shove on."

The firing at the boats had by this time slackened, but the cries
increased, and were now rising higher and fiercer as we approached.  We
reached the fort, the place of our former conflict.  Heavens! what a
scene presented itself!  It makes one's blood run cold to reflect on
it, even after the lapse of years.  On the platform lay two Spaniards,
and close to them three of our crew, stark and stiff, and already
stripped naked as the day they were born, by whom Heaven only knows;
while half a dozen native dogs were tearing and _riving_ the yet
scarcely cold carcasses, and dragging the dead arms hither and thither,
until our near approach frightened them away, with a loud unearthly
scream, of no kindred to a common bark.

One fierce brute, with his forepaws planted, straight and stiff, before
him, on a dead body, was tugging with his front teeth at the large
pectoral muscle; occasionally letting go his hold to look at us, and
utter a short angry bark, and again tearing at the bleeding flesh, as
if it had been a carcass thrown to him for food.  Another dog had lain
down, with a hold of one of the same poor fellow's cold hands.  Every
now and then he would clap his head sideways on the ground, so as to
get the back grinders to bear on his prey; and there the creature was,
with the dead blue fingers across his teeth, crunching and crunching,
and gasping, with his mouth full of froth and blood, and marrow, and
white splinters of the crushed bones, the sinews and nerves of the dead
limb hanging like bloody cords and threads from----Bah!--you have given
us a little _de trop_ of this, Master Benjie.

Two wounded Spaniards were all this time struggling in the soft mud
beyond the platform; their lower limbs, and in fact their whole bodies
up to the arm-pits, had already settled down into the loathsome chaos.
Some of our people were soft-hearted enough to endeavour to extricate
them, but, "Get along, get along--be off to the boats, will ye? be off
to the boats, if you wish to sleep in a sound skin," shouted by Mr
Sprawl, made all hands turn to the more engrossing affair of
self-preservation.

But as it was some time before we could all string over the stockade,
and the single plank that led to it from the platform across the mud, I
could not help remarking one of the poor fellows who appeared to have
been badly wounded, for there was blood on his ghastly visage.  His
struggles had gradually settled him up to the chin in the mire--he was
shrieking miserably--he sunk over the mouth--his exertions to escape
increased--the mud covered his nose--he began to cough and splutter for
breath--while he struggled hard with his arms to keep himself above the
surface--had he been one of the best swimmers alive--alas! he was now
neither on earth nor in water--his eyes were still visible.  Father of
mercies, let me forget their expression--their hopeless dying glare, as
he gradually sunk deeper and deeper into the quagmire.  Oh! what a
horrible grave! he disappeared, but his hands were still visible--he
clasped them together--then opened them again--the fingers spread out,
and quivered like aspen leaves, as he held them up towards heaven in an
attitude of supplication.  There--he is gone.

By the time the last of our stragglers had dragged their weary limbs
into the enclosure, the shouting and firing again waxed warm in the
direction of the boats; so we made all sail towards them the instant we
had scrambled over the rude stockade, leaving the other wounded
Spaniard, who lay in a harder part of the mud, to his fate,
notwithstanding the poor fellow's heart-piercing supplication not to be
left to perish in so horrible a manner as his comrade, who had just
disappeared.  We advanced as rapidly as we could, and presently came in
sight of this new scene of action.  The boats were filled with our
people who had been left to guard them, but were still aground,
although the flood was fast making.  They had evidently made the most
desperate attempts to get them afloat, and had been wading up to their
waists in the mud.  Four white Spaniards were blazing away at them, and
at least one hundred and fifty naked negroes were crowding round the
head of the creek, and firing from half-a-dozen old rusty muskets, and
throwing spears made of some sort of hard wood burnt at the ends, while
several were employed cutting down the mangroves and throwing them into
the mud, so as to be able to pass over them like a mat, and get at the
boats.  One or two of the demon-like savages were _routing_ on
bullocks' horns, while six or seven had already fallen wounded, and lay
bellowing and struggling on the ground before the well-directed fire of
our people.

"Advance, Mr Sprawl, for the love of heaven," the midshipman in charge
of the party in the boats sung out--"advance, or we are lost; our
ammunition is almost out."

Our own danger made it sufficiently evident, without this hint, that
our only chance of safety was by a desperate effort to drive our
opponents back into the wood, and there keep them at bay until the
boats floated.

"Ay, ay, my boys," cried Lanyard, "keep your fire--don't run short."

"Confound you, don't fire," shouted Mr Sprawl, "or you will hit some of
us," as several of the boat's crew nearest us continued,
notwithstanding, to pepper away; then, to his own people--"Follow me,
men; if we don't drive them into the wood, as Mr Lanyard says, till the
tide makes, we are lost."

"Hurrah!" shouted the brave fellows, "give them a touch of the pike and
cutlass, but no firing.--Hurrah!"

When we charged them, the negroes and their white leaders were in an
instant driven into the recesses of the jungle, but not before we had
captured three more of the Spaniards and seven of their black allies.
Our object being in the mean time attained, we called a halt, and sent
back a man to the boats, with orders to advise us the moment they were
afloat.  Worn out and feeble as most of the party were, from want of
food and fatigue, many fell asleep in a moment, leaning against trees,
or slipped down on the twisted roots of the mangroves.  Every thing had
continued quiet for about a quarter of an hour, no sound being heard
beyond an occasional shout or wild cry in the recesses of the
brushwood, when all at once the man we had despatched to the rear, came
rushing up to us at the top of his speed.

"The boats will be afloat in ten minutes, sir."

"Thank heaven, thank heaven," I exclaimed.

"But an Eboe canoe," continued the man, suddenly changing my joy into
sadness, "with more than fifty people on board, is now paddling up the
creek."

"The devil!" exclaimed Mr Sprawl, "are we never to get clear of this
infernal corner?"  And then recollecting who he was, and where he was,
and that the lives of the whole party were dependent on his courage and
self-possession, he rose, calm and resolute, from where he had sat
himself down on the root of a bush.

"Men, we may go to the right about now and be off to the boats--so send
the wounded forward; the officers and marines will bring up the rear.
So heave ahead, will ye? but no rushing now--be cool, for the credit of
the ship."

The instant we retreated, the sound of the negro horns and drums again
commenced, showing that our movements were watched; the yells rose
higher than ever, and dropping shots whistled over-head, clipping off a
leaf here and a dry branch there.  We sculled along, the noises behind
us increasing, until we once more reached the head of the creek.  The
boats were by this time not afloat exactly, but the advance of the tide
had so _thinned_ the mud, that it was clear, if we could once get the
people on board, we should have little difficulty in sliding them into
deep water.  However, the nearest could not be got within boat-hook
length of the bank, and two of the oars being laid out to form a
gangway, no sooner did the first seaman step along them,
than--crack--one gave way, and the poor fellow plumped up to the waist
in the mud.  If we were to get disabled in our fins, certain
destruction must ensue; this was palpable to all of us; so we had to
scramble on board through the abominable stinking slime the best way we
could, without risking any more of the ash staves.  In the mean time
the uncouth noises and firing in the rear came nearer and increased.

"So now, hand the prisoners on board, and place them beside their
comrades there," shouted Mr Sprawl.

Easier said than done.  Taking advantage of the uproar, they had hung
back, and now as the first of the savages appeared from under the green
trees, evidently with an intention of again attacking us, they fairly
turned tail, and before we could prevent them, they were off, and for
ever beyond our ken.  The last of our people had got on board, all to a
poor boy, who had been badly wounded, indeed ham-strung with a knife,
and as he had fainted on the brink from pain and loss of blood, for a
moment he had been forgotten.  But only for a moment.

"God help me, God help me," said I, "why, it is poor little Graham, my
own servant; shove close to, and let me try to get him on board."  The
lad spoken of was a slight brown-haired boy, about fifteen years of
age.  The sound of my voice seemed to revive him; he lifted his head;
but the four Spanish prisoners, whom we had secured on board, on the
instant, as if moved by one common impulse, made a bound overboard;
although they sank up to the waist, they made a desperate attempt to
reach the bank; the leading one, who seemed to have been an officer,
shouting out to their allies in the wood, "_Camaradas, una golpe bueno,
y somos salvados--una golpe fuerte, y somos libres_."  This was the
signal for a general rush of the combined column from the thicket; the
black naked savages, led on by the white crew of the slaver.  As they
rushed down to the brink, the poor wounded lad made a desperate attempt
to rise; and as he ran a step or two staggering towards the creek, he
looked behind him at the negroes, who were advancing with loud shouts.
He then, with his face as pale as ashes, and lips blue as indigo, and
eyes starting from the socket, called out, "For the dear love of Jesus,
shove ahead, and save me; Oh!  Mr Sprawl, save me!  Mr Brail, for God
Almighty's sake, don't desert me, Oh sir!"  A black savage had rushed
forward and seized him--I fired--he dropped, dragging the boy down with
him; and I could see him in his agony try to tear him with his teeth,
while the helpless lad struggled with all his might to escape from the
dying barbarian.  He did get clear of him; and with a strength that I
could not believe he had possessed, he once more got on his legs, and
hailed me again; but the uproar was now so loud, and the firing so hot,
that I could not hear what he said.

"The boats are afloat, the boats are afloat!" shouted twenty voices at
once.  At this very moment a negro caught the lad round the waist,
another laid hold of him by the hair, and before he could free himself,
the latter drew his knife round his neck--the next instant the trunk,
with the blood gushing from the severed arteries, was quivering amongst
the mud, while the monster held aloft the bleeding head with its
quivering and twitching features.

"Heaven have mercy on us--Heaven have mercy on us!" said I; but we were
now widening our distance fast, although I could see them strip the
body with the speed of the most expert camp-follower; and while the
Spaniards on shore were, even under our fire, trying to extricate their
comrades, all of them wounded, who were floundering in the slime and
ooze, their black allies were equally active in cutting up and
mutilating the poor boy with the most demoniacal ferocity and ..... I
dare not attempt further description of a scene so replete with horror
and abomination.  We poled along, with all the little strength that a
day of such dreadful incidents, and a climate of the most overpowering
heat and fearful insalubrity, had left us.  At length the creek widened
so as to allow us to ply our oars, when we perceived the large Eboe
war-canoe, already mentioned, in the very act of entering the narrow
canal we were descending.  As we approached, we had an opportunity of
observing the equipment of this remarkable craft; it was upwards of
sixty feet long, and manned by forty hands--twenty of a side, all
plying their great broad-bladed paddles.  These men sat close to the
gunwale of the vessel on each side, looking forward, and delving up the
water with their shovel-shaped paddles, the two rows sufficiently apart
to leave room for upwards of fifty naked men and women to be stowed
amidships.  These last were all bound with withes, or some kind of
country rope; and although there were no serious or very evident
demonstrations of grief amongst them, yet it at once occurred to me,
that they were slaves sent down to our black friend's depot, to await
the arrival of the next vessel, or probably they were intended to have
completed the polacre's cargo.  An old white-headed, yellow-skinned
negro, bearing the tatooed marks of a high-caste man of his tribe on
his square-featured visage, as if the skin had been peeled off his
temples on each side, was seated in the bow.  He evidently took us for
part of the crew of some slaver lying below.  He shouted to us, and
pointed to his cargo; but we had other fish to fry, and accordingly
never relaxed in our pulling, until at five in the afternoon, we were
once more on board of the felucca.




CHAPTER IV.

THE EVENING AFTER THE BRUSH.

On mustering, we found our loss had been exceedingly severe--no fewer
than seven missing, five of whom, I knew, had been killed outright, and
fourteen wounded, some of them seriously enough.  The first thing we
did was to weigh and drop down out of gunshot of the fort, when we
again anchored close under the bank on the opposite side of the river.
By the time we were all snug it was near six o'clock in the evening;
and the wild cries and uproar on the bank had subsided, no sound
marking the vicinity of our dangerous neighbours, excepting a startling
shout now and then, that gushed from the mangrove jungle; while a thick
column of smoke curled up into the calm evening sky from the smoking
ruins of the house.  Presently, thin grey vapours arose from the
surface of the water on each bank, and rolled sluggishly towards us
from the right and left, until the two sheets of mist nearly met.
Still a clear canal remained in the middle of the noble stream, as if
its dark flow had been narrowed to a space that a pistol-shot would
have flown across point-blank.  For an hour, the fog increased, until
it became like wreaths of wool, and then, when at the densest, it rose
gradually, until the bushes on each side of the river became dimly
visible, as if a gauze screen had been interposed between us and them.
It continued gradually to roll back, right and left, landward; until it
folded over and overlapped the trees on the banks, creeping along the
tops of them, yet leaving the air clear as crystal above its influence,
where presently the evening star rose sparkling as brightly as if it
had been a frosty sunset.  But we were not long to enjoy this pure
atmosphere, for right ahead of us a thicker body of vapour than what
had come off previously began to roll down the river, floating in the
air about ten or twelve feet from the surface of the water, where it
hung in a well-defined cloud, without in any way melting into the clear
atmosphere overhead.  When it reached within a cable's length of us, it
became stationary, and owned allegiance to the genius of the
sea-breeze, growing thin and smoke-like, and diffusing itself, and
poisoning the air all round.  It was the most noxious I ever breathed.

"Palpable marsh miasmata; the yellow fever in visible perfection,"
quoth Lieutenant Sprawl.

Through this mist, the glowing sun, now near his setting, suddenly
became shorn of his golden hair, and obliged us with a steady view of
his red bald globe; while his splendid wake, that half an hour before
sparkled on the broad rushing of the mighty stream, converting its
whirling eddies into molten gold, was suddenly quenched under the chill
pestilential fen-damp; and every thing looked as like the shutting in
of a winter's night in Ould Ireland as possible, with a dash of vapour
from my own river Lee, which has mud enough to satisfy even a Cork pig,
and that is saying a good deal.  Had we only had the cold, the
similitude would have been perfect.

The sun set; and all hands, men and officers, carried on in getting
themselves put to rights as well as they could, after a day of such
excitement and stirring incidents.  None of the wounded, I was rejoiced
to find, were likely to slip through our fingers; but the fate of the
poor fellows who were missing--What was it?  Had they been fairly shot
down, or sabred on the spot, or immolated afterwards--after the scenes
we had witnessed, what might it not have been?  The surgeon's mate, who
constituted part of our appointment, was a skilful fellow in his way,
and I had soon the gratification to see all the men who had been hurt
properly cared for.  As for my own wound, thanks to the profuse
hæmorrhage, the sensation was now more that of a stunning blow than any
thing else; and, with the exception of the bandage round my head, I was
not a great deal the worse, neither to look at, nor indeed in reality.
Old Davie Doublepipe, Dick Lanyard, and myself, had dived into the
small cabin; and having taken all the precautions that men could do in
our situation, we sat down, along with Pumpbolt the master, the two
reefers, who had come in the frigate's boats, and little Binnacle, to
our salt junk and grog.

"A deuced comfortable expedition, Brail, my darling, we have had this
same day," _quod_ Dick.

"Very," responded Benjamin Brail, Esquire.  "But, here's to you, my
man, _Dum vivimus vivamus_--so spare me that case bottle of rum."

However, we were too awkwardly placed to spend much time over our
frugal repast, as the poets say; so presently we were all on deck
again.  How beautiful, and how different the scene.  A small cool
breath of wind from the land had again rolled away the impure air from
the bosom of the noble river, and every thing overhead was once more
clear and transparent.  The bright new risen moon was far advanced in
the second quarter, and cast a long trembling wake of silver light on
the water, sparkling like diamonds on the tiny ripples, while the
darkened half of the chaste planet herself was as perfectly visible, as
if her disk had been half silver and half bronze.  Her mild light,
however, was not strong enough to quench the host of glorious stars
that studded the cloudless firmament.  On either hand, the black banks
were now clearly defined against the sky; the one shore being lit up by
the rising moon, and the other by the last golden tints of the recently
set sun.

The smoke over the site of the conflagration, which had been pale grey
during the daylight, became gradually luminous and bright as the night
closed in; and every now and then, as if part of the building we had
seen on fire had fallen in, a cloud of bright sparks would fly up into
the air, spangling the rolling masses of the crimson-tinged wreaths of
smoke.  At length the light and flame both slowly decreased, until they
disappeared altogether; leaving no indication as to their whereabouts.

"Come," said I, "we may all turn in quietly for the night.  The savages
ashore there seem at length to be asleep."

The words were scarcely out of my mouth, when a bright glare, as if a
flame from a heap of dry wood chips had suddenly blazed up, once more
illuminated the whole sky right over where we had seen the sparks and
luminous smoke, while a loud concert of Eboe drums, horns, and wild
shouts, arose in the distance.

"Some vile Fetish rite is about being celebrated," said I.

The noise and glare continued, and with a sickening feeling, I turned
away and looked towards the rising moon.  Her rays trembled on the
gurgling and circling eddies of the river, making every trunk of a
tree, or wreath of foam as it floated down with the current, loom clear
and distinct, as they swam in black chains and dark masses past the
sparkling line her chaste light illuminated.  I had leaned for near a
quarter of an hour with folded arms, resting my back against the
lowered yard, admiring the serenity of the scene, and contrasting it
with the thrilling events of the day, pondering in my own mind what the
morrow was to bring forth, when a large branch of a tree, covered with
foliage, floated past and attracted my attention--the black leaves
twinkling in the night breeze between us and the shining river.
Immediately a small canoe, with two dark figures in it, launched out
from the darkness; swam down the river into the bright wake of the
glorious planet, where the water flowed past in a sheet of molten
silver, and floated slowly across it.  The next moment it vanished in
the darkness.  I saw it distinctly--there could be no mistake.

"I say, friend Sprawl,"--he was standing beside me enjoying the luxury
of a cigar,--"did you see that?" pointing in the direction where the
tiny craft had disappeared.  He had also seen it.

"We had better keep a bright look-out," continued I; "those savages may
prove more venturesome in the darkness than we chose this morning to
believe possible."

I kept my eye steadily in the direction where we had seen the canoe
vanish; but she continued invisible, and nothing for some time occurred
to create any alarm.  Every thing remained quiet and still.  Even the
shouting on shore had entirely ceased.  On board of the felucca, the
men were clustered round a blazing fire forward, that cast a bright red
glare on the rushing water as it whizzed past, lap-lapping against our
bows, and closing in on the rudder, making it _cheep_ as it was
_jigged_ from side to side, with a buzzing gurgle; while the small
round whirling eddies, visible by the tiny circles of white froth and
hissing bells, where the divided waters spun away as if glad of their
reunion in our wake, rolled down astern of us, blending together in one
dark eddy, wherein the boats under the tafferel sheered about, with the
water flashing at their bows, like so many captured hippopotami, until
I expected every moment to see the taught painters torn away.

The wounded by this time were all stowed snugly below, but the figures
on the crowded deck of the little vessel glanced wildly round the
crackling fire.  Many of the men, who had floundered in the slime of
the creek, appeared like absolute statues of plaster of Paris, when the
mud had dried on them, which they were busily employed in picking off,
great patches of the hardened filth having adhered to their clothes
like greaves and cuisses.  Some were engaged cooking their food, others
were cleaning their arms, while the grog went round cheerily, and the
loud laugh and coarse jest evinced the buoyancy of young hearts, even
while they sat within ear-shot of the groans of their wounded comrades,
and the bodies of those who had fallen were scarce cold; while the most
appalling dangers to themselves had just been surmounted.

Lanyard was now called below by the surgeon's mate to inspect the
condition of the wounded.  Old Bloody Politeful and myself accompanied
him.  None of the sound part of the crew had yet turned in, but, in the
hurry of going ashore, all their hammocks had been left slung, and, as
the between decks was barely five feet high, it was rather a bothersome
matter to navigate between the rows of them, empty and full.  Two large
lanterns hung from hooks screwed into the beams amidships, but the
lights within were none of the brightest, nor were the glass panes any
of the clearest; so they did not greatly elucidate the state of
matters; but, in another sense, if to afford heat to the confined
berth-deck had been an object, they constituted a most efficient
apparatus, from the hot fat smoke that screwed out of the little
perforated tin domes at the top.  Immediately above the lanterns, that
were suspended by pieces of spunyarn about six inches long, and on each
side of the beam, where it had been bevelled away, was arrayed a whole
swarm of cockroaches in two circles, with their heads inward, and their
long feelers in perpetual motion, like the spears of the serried
phalanx of old,--a more courageous beetle than the rest, every now and
then making a forward movement of a step or two, until the heat of the
ascending flame scorched him back again.  However, we soon had to
attend to other matters.

The first amongst the wounded that I had occasion to address was the
corporal of marines, of whom mention has been before made,--one of the
boats'-crews who were leagued with us.  He was, although reputed half
crazy in the ship, a fine handsome young fellow--a Scotchman.  When we
came down he was speaking to a messmate, who stood beside his hammock
helping him to some drink.

"Oh, man," said he, "did ye no remark the clearness and stillness of
the creek, after leaving the muddy river, just before the action
began--immediately before it was stirred up by that hideous,
highland-cow-looking beast of a hippopotamy; the vile brute that raised
the mud, until it converted the crystal clear water into pease brose,
and be d----d to it?  I hate these wee Highland _nowt_.  A big sonsy
stot is a manageable animal, and respectable withal, and quiet; but
thae sma' hieland deevils!----Hech! what sharp horns they have!  And
although a bold front aye quells them, still they always are on the
look-out to take you at disadvantage--in the louping of a dyke, for
instance, wha will assure ye that they shall not kittle your
hinderlins?--But what am I raving about?--Ou ay! about the clear creek,
with the white scales of the bit fishes turning up their sides to the
light, and glancing like silver far down in the transparent depths of
the deep water, as we lay on our oars.  Guid kens--forbye being weak
and worn, and scant o' glee, for a leaden weight lay on my
speerits--yet the sicht drave me aff and awa' in a moment amang my ain
native blue hills and heathery braes--ay, and clear saugh-fringed
sparkling burnies too, rippling bonnily in the sunshine owre their
half-dry channels of bright sand and pebbles, with the trouts louping
_plump, plump_, out of the swirls at the bottom of the ripples at the
grey flies, and then glancing up the rushing streams, zig-zag like
fire-flaughts from ae shadowy bank till another--although all the while
I was conscious that maybe, between disease, and shot, and cauld iron,
I was but a step frae heeven--we'll no name the other place.  Oh, that
thocht of my home brack in upon my mind like a gleam of sunshine on a
stormy sea."

"Hillo, there's poetry for you, Master Lanyard," said I, a good deal
surprised.

The poor fellow had heard me speak, and presently appeared to become
highly excited, and to breathe very hard.  Sprawl and I had by this
time stuck our heads up between the rows of hammocks.

"Well, Lennox, what may be wrong with you?" said I.

"Nothing very particular," was the answer; "only I am afraid that I am
about departing for yon place."

"What place?" said I.

"Ou!  I just meant to insinuate to your honour, that I was dying."

"Pooh, nonsense!" said Sprawl; "don't be so chicken-hearted, man.  No
fear of you, if you will but keep a good heart."

"It may be sae, it may be sae; but I am doomed, and I know it."

"How?" said I, much interested--"How?  Tell me what forebodings you
have had--do now?"

To make what passed after this intelligible, it is proper to remark,
that this poor fellow, notwithstanding his peculiarities, was the most
sober and hard-working man in the frigate--a favourite with all hands,
men and officers.  It appeared that, for several days before the
setting out of the expedition, he had been suffering from
dysentery,--indeed, he had been so very ill, that this very morning the
surgeon had given him eighty drops of laudanum;--notwithstanding, he
would not on any account be left behind, but insisted on going in the
boats.  It was soon evident, however, that even during the attack he
was unnaturally elevated by the effects of the medicine; for although a
known and tried hand, and acknowledged to be one of the bravest men in
the ship, yet his extraordinary conduct had startled many of us, myself
amongst others.  When the long shed was set fire to, for instance, I
thought he was drunk, for he kept swaggering about, with half shut
eyes, and speaking to himself, in a manner altogether unaccountable,
knowing as I did the character of the man; but in the tumult I had
after this lost sight of him.

"What makes you so down-hearted, my man?"

I now saw that the poor fellow was evidently still under the influence
of laudanum, although the exhilarating effects had evaporated.  It
afterwards came to my knowledge, that the surgeon, seeing his weak
state when the boats got on board again, had given him.  another dose,
but this had not yet had time to operate.

"What makes you so down-hearted?" I repeated.

"Down-hearted!" he rejoined, his eyes twinkling brightly, as the fresh
doze began to operate; "down-hearted, bless your honour!  I was rather
so, certainly, some time ago, but now I begin to feel myself growing
the happiest fellow in the whole ship,--yes, the
happiest--happy--hap"----and he fell over into a short troubled snooze.

Some time elapsed, and I had removed to another part of the vessel,
when I again heard his voice.

"Stand clear until I get out--don't you hear them call all
hands?--so,"--and before I could prevent him he had floundered on deck.

We lifted him into his hammock again.  He still continued to breathe
very hard.  At length he looked me right in the face,--

"I say, master-at-arms--Lord! what a comical dream I have had!  Why, we
were all ashore cutting out,--what do you think?--a little heathen god,
defended by bull-dogs!--and a devil of a good fight he made of it, ha,
ha, ha!--We were too many for him though; and when we had set fire to
his house, and split the skulls of a thousand of his people or so, the
little grinning, monkeyfied son-of-a-gun, just as I was taking aim at
him, jumped down from his perch, and flew like a cannon-shot right
against me, giving me such a settler, ha, ha, ha!--Zounds! only fancy
Jack Lennox mentioned in the return, as 'Killed by a heathen god! the
bloody little image pitching itself right into his stomach!'--ha, ha,
ha!"

And so in truth it was.  For when our friend Sergeant Quacco bolted, on
finding the shrine of the Fetish no sanctuary, and had whirled the
image amongst us, the uncouth missile had brought up in the pit of poor
Lennox's stomach sure enough, where it had told most fearfully.

All the wounded complained greatly of thirst, scarcely one of them in
his groanings saying a word about the _pain_ of his wounds.

Another poor fellow, an Irishman, who belonged to the frigate's
mizen-top, had got a cruel cut transversely down his cheek, which it
had fairly laid open.

"Well, Callaghan," said I, in my new capacity of surgeon's mate, "how
do you get on?  Ugly gash that--spoiled your beauty, my fine fellow.
But never mind--Greenwich at the worst under your lee, you know."

He looked at me, with a face as pale as death, but with a comical
expression notwithstanding, and a bright twinkle of his eye--"Please
you, sir, tobacco juice nips like fury."

"I don't doubt it.  But what have you to do with it at present?  Wait
until your wound gets better.  Surely you have not a quid in your cheek
_now_?"

He sucked in his sound cheek; but the exertion started the
plaster-straps that had been applied across the wound in the other, and
the blood began to flow.

"Blazes!" said he, "if that d--d quid won't be the death of me!" and
thereupon he hooked it out of his potato-trap with his finger, and
threw the cherished morsel with great violence from him.

Here our Scotch friend again broke in upon us--"I say, you Clinker--you
master-at-arms--damn me (gude forgie me for swearing) if I think it is
a dream after all.  I am now sure it was a _bona fide_ spree that we
have had on shore, and that my days are numbered from the thump I
received from the graven image.  Lord, that Saunders Skelp should have
been left _to dree such weird_!  Hech, but _the contusion_ was most
awful sair!"

I pricked up my ears when, first of all in his ravings, I heard the
poor fellow pronounce the words _bona fide_, but followed up as this
was by his speaking of a _contusion_, a word utterly unknown amongst
the crew on the berth-deck, I became riveted to the spot, and most
anxiously desirous to know something more of our marine.  I had stepped
a few paces towards the ladder, but my curiosity again drew me to the
side of his hammock.

"I say, friend, wha may ye be?" said the man--in the common routine of
the ship, I had never noticed his Scotch accent before; more Scotch
now, by the way, than it usually was--"I say, friend, what for do you
persevere in haunting me in this way?"

"Why, my good man, I am only lending a hand to see you and the rest of
the wounded properly cared for--believe me, I have no desire to bother
you or any one else."

"It may be all vera true," said he, turning himself, apparently with
great pain, on his back; "it may be vera true--but noo, sin' I am
persuaded that I dinna dream, let me gather the sma' wits God has gi'en
me weel about me.  Let me see--let me see--we all ken the service we
were ordered on this blessed morning--nane better than Saunders
Skelp--what am I dreaming o'?  Jack Lennox, I mean--gude hae a care o'
us, my harns[1] are strangely confused."  Then, after a pause, during
which he appeared to be exerting himself to call in his scattered
thoughts--"Weel a-weel, ye a' ken wha focht, and wha sang sma, and mony
a stalwart blow was struck--_that_ I ken--and sickly as I was, it
behoved me, the son o' auld Pate Skelp of Lincomdodie, to do my
_devoir_, as Sir Walter says, and to it I buckled; but I shall believe
in second sicht or any other miracle noo, for we drave a' obstruction
before us like chaff, until we encountered wi' that wee wudden goddity;
when, to stop our advance (I saw it as plain as peas), the creature
whirled aff its perch, and flew crack against the midriff of me,
Saunders, like a stane frae a _testudo_--Hoot, no, of Jack Lennox, I
mean."


[1] Brains.


"My good friend," said I, "you must be very ill--compose yourself."
Then aside to one of the men, "Are you sure Lennox is not tipsy?"  The
poor fellow overheard me.

"Tipsy! me foo!" and he lay back and drew a long breath like a
porpoise.  He immediately continued--"Ay, and I believe I am foo after
all--but wha may ye be that taunts me thereanent sae unceremoniously,
and me mair than half dead?  It was na _yeer_ siller that slokened me,
I'se warrant, if foo I am--Foo!--sma' manners have ye to taunt a puir
chiel like me with being foo--my certie, whisky maun hae been plentier
than gentlemen among us the day; or foo I neer wad hae been--Foo!"

I was now much interested about the poor fellow, and as I incommoded
the wounded man who lay in the cot next him to port, I moved round to
the other side, and again addressed our eccentric friend.  "Now, my
good man," said I, "I don't want to teaze you; but as the doctor says
he has great doubts of you, I again ask you if I can do any thing for
you; have you any bequest to leave?"

"I say, freen'," rapped out the poor fellow, "the doctor may go be
damned,"--this was certainly very plain, if not very
complimentary;--"and it will not break my heart if ye're no that far
ahint him.  But I shall live to dance at his _dregy_[2] yet.  What can
he say to a man like me?  But you, sir, it was you that accused me of
getting drunk--and drunk I may be after all, for my head sooms most
awfu'."


[2] Dirge--burial.


The poor creature's mind was now utterly a wool-gathering.  Presently
he called out, "I say, my lad, what are you abusing that brute beast
for?  Haud aff the dog, sir--that's the beast that wanted to worry Mr
Brail; but never mind, dinna massacre him, noo since you have ta'en
him--never abuse a prisoner."

I began to get tired of this, and was about moving from where I stood,
and going on deck, when, on turning round, I found the ladder had been
unshipped on purpose to afford access to some locker behind it, and
Sprawl and I, unless we had chosen to give additional trouble to poor
devils who were most of them sufficiently _done_ already, were obliged
to remain a little longer where we were.  Immediately after this Lennox
again sung out, "Neebour, can you tell me whar about we are, eh?"--and
before I could answer he continued, "Hech, man, he's but a puir shilpit
cretur, that Brail lad."  I was half inclined to be angry at this
unceremonious opinion of my personal qualifications, but to be thus
apostrophized to my face, was so very absurd, that I laughed in spite
of myself.  "A puir bit animal, sir," the man continued--"and tak my
word for it, Saunders Skelp's word, that he must have been ony thing
but gleg at the uptak.  The chiel, I'se warrant, was slow, slow at his
lair--a kind of _yird taid_ as it were--and what the deevil that
hairum-scairum captain of ours, Sir Oliver, could see in the animal to
take him to sea with him, I'm sure I canna tell.  But then the
commodore is siccan a throughither kind o' chap himsell, that when ane
has time to reflect on't, there is nay miracle in his drawing to this
camsteerie callant, Benjie Brail, after all."

I could no longer contain, so smothering my laughter the best way I
could, I left him, and was in the act of ascending when I heard our
friend Skelp again maundering to himself.

"God, to have seen the birr with which the wee deevil of a heathen god
flew right through the air, and gied me siccan a devel in the wame.
Hech, it is ominous--vary ominous, and I'll die o't, I'll die o't."
Then, as he hove about on the other tack, "it is maist awfu' het in
this cursed hole; oh for a green tree and a cool breeze!

  'Tityre, tu patulæ recubans sub tegmine fagi.'"


A long pause.

"Lord, but it's chokey!"

I laughed outright, and so did Sprawl.  Saunders noticed this, and in
his delirium began to laugh too.

"What's that skirling like the curlew one moment, and grunting like a
nine farrow pig the other?  I say, friend, what kittles ye sae?  Come
here, my wee man, come here;" and raising himself in his hammock, he
stared idly into my face, and then shook his head violently.  "Heard
ever any Christian the like o' that?" said the poor corporal; "hear
till that," and he again walloped his _cabeza_ from side to side;
"dinna ye hear hoo my brain is dried up and knotted in my _cranium_ by
this vile fever?  Safe us, it's a' into lumps like aitmeal in brose,
and noo the lumps have hardened into a consistence like flint,--losh!
how they rattle in my skull like chucky stanes in a wean's
rash-basket!"  Another shake of his head.  "Ech, the very fire-sparks
are fleeing from my ee.  I wonder if they can be hardened ideas; at ony
rate they have struck fire frae ilk ither.  Do ye ken I could write
poetry the noo--I'll be up and overboard, if you dinna haud me--I'll be
up and overboard."

Discreet even in his madness, he had given warning and time for the
hint to be taken by his mess-mates, and he was now forcibly held down.

As he lay back he continued to murmur, "Oh, puir Saunders Skelp, puir
Saunders Skelp, that ye should hae gotten yer death-blow frae a bloody
wee heathen god, and you the son of a minister's man--a godly bairn of
the Reformation!"  Then lifting his head, as if his own exclamation had
startled him, "Saunders Skelp--wha ca's on Saunders Skelp--there is nae
Saunders Skelp here, I trow?  As for you, ye wee blackened deevil,"
(me, Benjie Brail, viz.) "Oh, man, if I had gotten the educating o' ye,
my taws wad hae driven mair lair intil ye at the but-end, than ten
Southern maisters wha appeal till the head."

Our attention was here diverted by the hail of the look-out on deck.

"Boat, ahoy!"  A pause.  "Coming here?"  Still no answer.

I scrambled up the ladder, by this time replaced, accompanied by Mr
Sprawl and Lanyard, who, during my idle palaver with the Scotch
corporal, had made an overhaul of all the poor fellows, and seen every
one's wants attended to.  When we came on deck, we found a cluster of
people at the aftermost part of the felucca.  The moment we advanced,
little Binnacle said, "Some one has twice hailed us from the water
astern, sir, but we can make nothing of it.  We hear the voice, but we
cannot see the man who shouts, sir."

Both Davie Doublepipe and myself strained our eyes to catch the object;
for although it was a bright moonlight overhead, yet astern of us the
thick mist that had rolled down the river, and still hovered in that
direction, concealed everything under its watery veil.

Presently we heard the splash of a paddle, and a voice shouted out,
"Oh, dis current, dis current!  I never sall be able to stem him.  Send
a boat to pick me up; do--send a boat, massa."

This was one thing we begged to decline doing.

"My man, whoever you may be, you must shove ahead, and get alongside
yourself, for no boat shall be sent to you until we make you out," sung
out old Dick.

Here we could hear the creature, whatever it was, puff and blow, and
the splashing of the paddle became louder, while every now and then it
gave a thump with its open palm on the side of the canoe, or whatever
it might be it was in.  At length a small dory, as it is called in the
West Indies, a tiny sort of canoe, shot out of the fog, with a dark
figure paddling with all his might in the stern, while a slighter one
was sitting in the bow.  He was soon alongside, and who should scramble
on board but our friend the resetter.  He took no notice of any of us,
but, turning round, stooped down over the side, and said something in
an African dialect, that I could not understand, to the figure in the
boat, who immediately handed up what appeared to me to be a log of
wood, which he put away carefully beside the long-gun.  He then called
out again to the party remaining in the canoe to come on deck, when a
handsome young Eboe woman stepped on board.

"Now, captain," said our free-and-easy friend--"now, captain, will you
hab de goodness to hoist in my dory?"

"And for what should I do that same?" said the fourth lieutenant, a
little taken aback by the fellow's cool impudence.  "Little reason why
I should not knock you overboard, my darling, after the transactions of
this morning."

"Transaction, captain?  O, massa, I don't know him; but dis I knows, if
you hab got into one scrape dis day, you desarve it--ah, very mosh."

A momentary feeling of irritation shot across Lanyard, but the
absurdity of the whole affair instantly quelled it, and, in spite of
himself, he could not help laughing.

"Well, well, Clinker, take care of this man, and the woman who is with
him, will ye? and tell Jerry to get supper in the cabin."

The lieutenants and I resumed our walk on the confined deck of the
little vessel for a quarter of an hour, when the steward came and
announced that supper was ready.  We went below, where our comforts in
a small way had been excellently well attended to; the lamp was burning
cheerily, the small table was covered with an immaculate table-cloth,
although none of the finest; and two well-filled decanters of Teneriffe
sparkled on the board, while a beautiful junk of cold salt beef, and a
dish of taties in their skins, with the steam smoking up through the
cracks in them, and a large case-bottle of capital old Jamaica, gave
assurance of a small streak of comfort after the disasters and fatigues
of the day.

Speaking of potatoes, stop till I immortalize my old mother's receipt.
"To dress a potato--_wash_ it well, but no _scraping_; at the thickest
end cut off a piece"--(I beg the dear old woman's pardon--_pace_)--"cut
off a piece the size of a sixpence.  This is the safety-valve through
which the steam escapes, and all rents in the skin are thereby
prevented---just as the aforesaid valve prevents a rupture in the
steam-boiler; and if you do this carefully, oh for the mealiness
(_maliness_) thereof!"

Lanyard had asked old Pumpbolt the master, little Binnacle his only
mid, the youngster who had behaved so gallantly at the start, to sup
with him; along with Mr Marline, one of the master's mates of the
Gazelle; and young De Walden, another reefer of the dear old barky, a
most beautiful, tall, handsome, although slightly framed, boy.  So far
as I can judge, the youngster stood about five feet ten.  He might have
been more.  He had his shoes on, but no stockings--very wide
trowsers--no waistcoat nor jacket, but a broad white-and-blue striped
shirt, folded very far back at the throat, and no neckcloth.  He wore
an enormously broad-brimmed straw hat, with a black ribbon round it, in
rather a natty bow on the left side, while his loins were still girt
with his by no means maiden sword.  As I was diving into the cabin
through the small companion, he came up to me--"Do you know, sir, that
I cannot sup with Mr Lanyard to-night?  I wish you would ask him to
excuse me, sir"--

"Indeed, Master de Walden," said I, "I cannot; you must come; I am sure
a glass of wine will do you good."

"I know, sir, I know, and am very much obliged to you; but--but I have
no clothes, sir.  I wet my jacket this morning in weighing the
stream-anchor, and my only other one is so covered with mud, that
really I am unable decently to appear in it."

"Poo, never mind, boy; come down in any way you choose."

We adjourned to the cabin.  Old David, as pleasant a fellow as ever
stepped, notwithstanding his peculiarities; Dick Lanyard, a darling in
his way; Pumpbolt and myself sat down at one side of the table, having
first deliberately taken our coats off.  We were confronted by little
Binnacle, and the other midshipmen, who came down immediately after.
Young de Walden sat in his trowsers and shirt, with his black silk
cravat tied only once round his neck, and a red silk handkerchief round
his waist.  The dress set off the handsome young fellow's figure to
great advantage, the fineness of his waist giving a splendid relief to
the spread of his shoulders, while his beautifully moulded neck, white
as the driven snow, contrasted strikingly with his noble but sun-burnt
countenance; while his hair curled in short black ringlets far back on
his large marble forehead.

The salt junk was placed on the table, and we all began our operations
with great zeal; the biscuit vanished in bushelsful,--the boys were
happy as princes, the smallest, little Binnacle, becoming talkative
from the comfortable meal, and the exhilarating effects of a stiffish
glass of grog, when who should walk into the cabin but Sergeant Quacco
himself?  He had diversified his loveliness after a most remarkable
manner; first, he was naked as the day his mother bore him, all to his
waistcloth of red serge.  He had sandals of coarse untanned leather on
his feet, a cross belt of black leather slung over his right shoulder,
which supported a bayonet without a sheath, and into which the rust had
eaten--the whole affair being much honeycombed--while his broad chest
and brawny arms were tatooed in gunpowder or indigo, with the most
fantastic shapes.  On his head he wore an old military shacko, the
brass ornaments cruelly tarnished, and carried a long wand of wild cane
in his hand, of the thickness of my thumb, and about ten feet high, the
top of which kept rasp, rasping, slantingly against the roof of the low
cabin as he spoke.

"Hillo, steward, what do you mean by this, that you let these savages
turn us out of house and home in this manner?" cried the fourth
lieutenant.--Then addressing the interloper--"My fine fellow, you are a
little off your cruising ground, so be making yourself
scarce--Bolt--vanish--get on deck with you, or I shall be after
swearing a very ugly oath."

"Massa, massa," quoth the man, "easy for you chuck me oberboard--nobody
can say you shan't--but only listen leetle bit, and I know you yousef
shall say my hargument good for someting."

There was a pause, during which he civilly waited for Lanyard to speak,
when finding he had no inclination to do so, he continued--

"Ah I know, and I older man den you, massa; people never should trike
when dem blood is up, unless in de case of fight for Kin Shorge.  Ah,
alway wait, massa, until you see and consider of de reason of de ting."

The good-hearted fellow was rebuked before the poor black savage; I
suppose the latter saw it in his face, for all at once he gathered
courage, and approached close to him, and placing his large black
paw--I noticed the palm was a dingy white--on his arm between the elbow
and wrist, he looked up into Dick's face,--

"Massa, you have not got one wife?"

"No I have not."

"But, massa, you can fancy yourself to hab one wife."

Lanyard nodded.

"Well, den, I go on.  Suppose you hab one comfortable house, plenty pig
dere, yam grow all round, orange tree blossom close to, plantain trow
him cool shadow over all, bending heavily in de breeze, over de house;
wid de fruit ready for drop into your mout, when you look up at him; de
leetle guinea pig squeak here and snort dere; we hab pineapple and
star-apple--oh, wery sweet--de great corn (maise dem call him) grow all
round de house; pease cover him like one vine; and your servants are
working and singing, and de comfortable sunshine is drying every ting,
and closing all de beautiful flowers in him sleepy heat.  You yousef
are sitting in your chair, wid some small drop of grog, after you hab
eat good dinner of goat, and maybe one broiled fis; and just when you
take your pipe, light him, and put him into your mout--crack--one
musket-shot sing over your head--you jomp--(who would not jomp?--Debil
himself would jomp)--and before you can tink--flash--one sailor make
blow at you wid him glass-clear cutlass.  And ah, massa, suppose de
worstest to come, and dese strangers to set fire to your quiet hut,
after beating and bruising _you_; and de flames begin to crackle and
hiss over de wery apartment where you know your wife is, and are
consuming all your goods at de same time; and dem black people _were my
goods_: for if you had left we to oursef dis morning, I should have got
two hundred doubloon, and five hundred piece of check clot, from de
Spanish captain, for dose one hundred and fifty slave; who," (his smile
here might have been the envy of the Fiend himself,) "to prevent dem
from being miserable as you call in Havanna, you hab sent to be happy
in heaven."  And he groaned in great bitterness of spirit.

I was much struck with all this, and looked steadfastly at the poor
creature, who was standing right opposite me with his arms folded, in
all the dignity of a brave man, who considers his fate sealed.  There
was a long pause.  When he next spoke, it was in a low melancholy tone.

"De morning sun, when him first sparkle on de waterdrop dat hang like
diamond on de fresh green leaf, shine on me dis wery morning, one reesh
and happy man--one leetle chief--master of all dem ting I speak about.
White man-of-war peoples come.  Sun set in de west,--red trou de sickly
fog, leaving every wegitable yellow, and dry, and dusty--who him shine
on now--on me, Quacco, once more--aye, but Quacco widout house, or
home, or friend, or goods, more as he hab on him back--on Quacco
standing up in him kin, desolate as one big large baboon de day him new
catch."  Here the poor fellow could no longer control his feelings, but
wept bitterly--after a burst of grief, he continued, with a voice
almost inarticulate from intense emotion--"If all dis was pass wid you,
captain, in one leetle hot day, in one small twelve hour!"  But his
manhood once more rallied in his bosom, and making a step towards
Lanyard, with all the native independence of a noble savage, he said,
laying one of his hands on his heart, "Yes, massa, I ask you, had all
dis happen to you, let alone one poor black debil like myself, white
man as you is--Kin's officer as you is--Christian person on de back of
bote--can you put your hand where mine is now, and say, dat your spirit
would not have been much move--dat it would not have been a bitter,
bitter ting to look back to what you was when dat sun rose, and den to
consider what his last light glanced on?"  He now slowly drew his
bayonet--I started at the motion, and Sprawl half rose from his chair,
and seized the carving knife that lay on the table.

The man did not move a muscle, but continued looking steadfastly in the
fourth lieutenant's face, while he placed the handle or pipe of the
naked weapon in his right hand.

"Massa," at length he said, coolly and deliberately, "I am helpless and
unarmed, and a poor drunken rascal beside, and in your power--one
moment and you can make cut my troat."  Dick returned the weapon, and
signed to him to sheath it, which he did--he then unexpectedly turned
round to me----"And as for you massa, if I have ill used _you_ dis day,
you know of de provocation--you best know what you would have done in
my place.  But, massa, bote for we blood is red, and you should not
forget dis ting, dat one time dis forenoon it might hab been for you
place to hax Serjeant Quacco to save you from dem brute beast on sore."

I was taken regularly aback, and blackie saw it; so he now assumed an
easier mien, as if conscious he had made a favourable impression.

"But what brought you here, my good man?" said I.

"De fear of death," he promptly replied.  "It has enter de foolis head
of de blacks dat I was de cause of de attack--dat I was in league wid
you, being, as you see, one Englis gentleman like yousefs."  (I had
great difficulty in maintaining my gravity at all this.)  "So my wife
dere creep to where I hide when de evening come, and say"--here he took
hold of Sprawl's hand in both of his, and looked up tenderly into his
face--(any one having our friend Liston's countenance, when the Beauty
is shamming Bashful, painted on the retina of his mind's eye, has a
tolerable idea of the expression of Davie's face.  Oh for an hour of
Wilkie to have caught the two cherubs as a group!)--"'Quacco'--him say
'_Hokey doodle doo_.'"

"Say what?" quoth Sprawl, like to choke with suppressed laughter--"Say
what?"

The poor fellow regarded the lieutenant for some time with the greatest
surprise, murmuring aside, "What can de good gentleman see to amuse him
so mosh?" then aloud, "Him say in de Eboe tongue, 'you old willain,
your troat is to be slice dis wery night.'--'De debil,' say I, '_Jooram
junkee pop_, say I; dat is, it shan't if I can help it.  So I bolt--run
away--launch dory--and here I is, Serjeant Quacco, ready once more to
serve his Majesty Kin Shorge--God save de Kin!"

Here old Bloody Politeful fairly exploded into the most uproarious
mirth.  The negro looked at him in great amazement for some time, until
at length the infection caught me, when blowing all my manners to the
winds, off I went at score after our friend.  The peculiarities of
Davie Doublepipe's voice were more conspicuous in his joyous moments,
if that were possible, than when he spoke calmly; and as he shouted
out, "I say, Benjie, _Jooram junkee pop_," in one tune, and "Why,
Lanyard, _Hokey doodle doo_," in the other, the alternations were so
startling to poor Quacco's ear, that he looked at the lieutenant and
then at me first of all in great alarm, and with his eye on the door,
as if to ascertain that there was no impediment to a rapid retreat.  At
last he seemed to comprehend the mystery, and caught the contagion of
our mirth also, shouting as loud as either of us--"What dem white
gentlemen can see to laugh at--what funny ting it can be? ha, ha,
ha--dat big one speak wery comical; one time squeak squeak like one
leetle guinea-pig, den grunt grunt like de big boar; he must surely be
two mans tie up in one kin--ha, ha, ha!"  The negro instantly saw the
advantage he had gained over us, in being the cause of so much
merriment, and he appeared determined not to lose it.  "So you shee,
massa Captain--you really mosh not be asame, after all, to be shivel to
me and my vife--who is here cowering behind de door; I bring him dat
you may see him take care of, for de men dere forward don't behave
well--none at all."

"Why, Mr Serjeant," said Sprawl, "show the lady in, and no more about
it."  The man said something in Eboe, and forthwith in stepped one of
the most startling apparitions that ever I witnessed.  It was a tall,
exquisitely formed young Eboe woman--fair enough to have passed for a
mulatto.  She wore neatly worked grass buskins, that fitted round the
ankle, as close as a laced boot made by Gundry.  Her only dress was
composed of a long web of some sort of native cloth, about a foot wide,
and composed of red, blue, and yellow stripes alternately.  Three or
four turns of it were wrapped round her loins, and then an end hung
down before, with a deep fringe of the blended colours of the stripes;
while the other end was carried up from the right hip, across her back,
and brought over the left shoulder, where it was again festooned, by
being twined two or three turns round the left arm; which, when she
entered, was folded across her bosom.  Her skin was thickly tatooed at
the waist, but her beautiful bosom was untouched; all to a dark peak,
that projected upwards, giving the tatooing the appearance of a
dark-coloured stomacher.  Her cheeks and forehead were also thickly
marked, but without impairing the beauty of the expression of her
bland, although African features--such an eye, and such teeth!  She
wore large gold ear-rings; and anklets and armlets of solid silver.
Her head was bound round with a large green or blue cotton shawl; and
there she stood, looking at us with the greatest composure; totally
unconscious of the unusualness of her costume, or the scantiness
thereof.

"Well, my good man, take a glass of grog, will ye? and here, give your
wife a glass of wine, and then go and betake yourselves to rest, in the
quietest corner you can find.--Here, steward, see that Serjeant Quacco
and his wife are cared for--a corner forward of some kind or another
until morning."

"Never say such a ting, massa--de men were unpleasant company--can't go
to dem--so I bring my vife to sleep wid you."

"Mighty obliged, master serjeant--but would rather be excused, if it be
the same thing to you."

"Ho, ho, ho," laughed the savage--"I mean, massa, dat you would permit
we to sleep at foot of de ladder dere, and not be obliged to go among
de rude peoples in de oder part of de sip."

"Well, well, do as you please; but let me go and secure a couple of
hours' sleep, before the tide turns, will ye?"

"Certainly, massa--would like to drink your health, though,
massa--Leetle more grog, please, massa."

"Not another drop, sir.--Steward, see Serjeant Quacco and his wife
safely bestowed under the ladder there, and then fasten the door."

Here Quacco once more stuck his round head in at the door.  "Massa, I
beg one fowl to kill before de fetish."

"Get along with you, sir--away."

Our black visitors finally disappeared, and I turned round to look at
my shipmates.  The first lieutenant had fallen back, with his head
resting against the small side-berth, sound asleep, with a piece of
beef on his fork, the latter firmly clutched in his hands; Dick Lanyard
had fairly slipped down, until he hung by his chin on the edge of the
table, like a parrot suspended by his beak; old Pumpbolt had slid off
his chair altogether, and was fast enough on the bare deck, with his
unquenched pipe sticking in his mouth; while the poor little reefers
had fallen forward with their heads on the table; Dick Marline having
actually dropped with his nose into his plate, amongst the beef and
potatoes; and all snoring most melodiously.  We were in truth
completely done up; so, leaving our friends stretched on the lockers
and in the berths, and bestowed as well as the slender means of the
small vessel permitted, I adjourned to the deck once more, in my
capacity of pilot, to see how the weather looked.

I then returned to the cabin, and having desired the steward, who was
comparatively fresh, to call me when the tide turned, I offered up my
short but heart-warm prayer of thanksgiving to the God of my fathers
for his great mercy vouchsafed to me during the past day; and imploring
his gracious protection during the coming night, I lay down in my
berth, where in a minute I was as sound asleep as the others.




CHAPTER V.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SERJEANT QUACCO.

I had scarcely, to my conception, been asleep at all, when I was called
again.  "If ever I practise the calling of a pilot in this wide world
after this!" said I to myself as I stumbled, yawning and stretching,
about the confined cabin.

It might have been about eleven at night when I got on deck.  There was
a heavy ground-swell tumbling in upon us over the bar, which made the
little vessel pitch violently.

"See all clear to cut away the kedge," said I.

But there was no need; for the swell that rolled in was as yet deep,
dark, and unbroken.  I looked forth into the night, endeavouring by the
starlight, for the moon was obscured by a thick bank of clouds in the
eastern horizon, to distinguish the whereabouts of the bar at the
river's mouth, but all was black flowing water, and there was no sound
of breakers; so I again went below, and in a minute slept as sound as
before.

I cannot precisely say how long I had been in the land of dreams, when
I was again roused by the steward calling Mr Lanyard.

"Mr Wadding"--this was the gunner of the little vessel--"does not like
the look of the weather, sir; it has become somewhat threatening, and
the felucca is riding very uneasy since the tide has turned, sir."

The sharp jerking motion of the small craft corroborated the man's
account but too forcibly; and once more I went on deck, accompanied by
the lieutenant, where I was a good deal startled by the scene before
me.  The ebb-tide was now running down, and past us like a mill-stream;
and the bar, which a couple of hours before was all black and
undistinguishable, began now to be conspicuous, from a crescent of
white waves which shone even through the darkness; while a deep and
increasing hoarse murmur, "like thunder heard remote," was borne up the
river towards us on the night wind.  The foaming breakers on the bar,
as the tide continued to fall, spread out; and in an hour, the rush of
the tide downwards, and the tumble of the sea inwards, placed us, even
at the distance of our anchorage, in a regular cauldron of broken
water, where the little craft was knocked about as if she belonged to
nobody, while every moment I expected the cable to part.

It was a regular snow-storm; the swell, broken on the bar, roared into
the river in splashing waves, which, when the downward current dashed
against them, flew up in spouts, covering every thing with spray, that
was puffed away seaward like smoke by the sharp land-breeze which had
suddenly set down, counter-checking in a moment the regular easterly
trade-wind.  The little vessel was thus kicked here and yerked there,
as if it had been a cork in the midst of the bubbling of a boiling pot.
Oh! how I longed for daylight!  At length daylight came, and the sun
began to exhale the dank pestiferous vapours that towards grey dawn had
once more mantled over the water.

For an hour it was again so thick that we could see nothing in the
direction of the bar; but the noise of the breakers continued to
increase; and as the boats alongside were by this time, notwithstanding
all our endeavours, half full of water, I feared that, even when the
tide began to answer again, we should be unable to send one of them
down to sound; so there we lay in the miserable consciousness of having
been foiled in our object on the one hand, and with small prospect of
being able to get out to rejoin the frigate on the other.  At length,
towards seven o'clock, the mist rose; the unwholesome smell of mud, and
slime, and putrifying vegetables was no longer perceptible, and the
glorious sun once more shone on the broad expanse of rushing waters.
The mangrove-covered banks became again distinctly visible and
well-defined, and the horizon seaward began to look blue, clear, and
cheery.  But all this while the bar was one bow of roaring foam; that
increased as the sea-breeze freshened, and fairly stifled the _terral_,
until there was not one solitary narrow streak of blue water in the
whole breadth of the river's mouth.

Dick was pacing the deck in no small perplexity I saw, debating in his
own mind whether or not he should send below and rouse out Mr Sprawl,
when the surgeon passed me.

"Good morning, doctor."

He returned the salute.

"How are all the wounded this morning?"

"All doing well, sir."

"And Lennox, how is he?"

The doctor laughed.

"Oh, all right with him now, sir; but the poor fellow is awfully
ashamed at the exhibition his messmates have told him he made
yesterday.  He is much better, however; and I hope will be out of his
hammock this forenoon, if the weather keeps fine."

I had a sort of anxiety to know, from my own observation, how the poor
fellows were getting on; so I followed our friend, and descended with
him in his visit to the sick and hurt.

Almost the first man I spoke to was Lennox.

"Glad to find you so much better, my man; I hope you feel yourself
stronger this morning?"

A faint blush spread over the poor fellow's thin wasted features, and
he hesitated in his answer.  At length he stammered out--"Thank you,
sir; I am much better, sir."

"Who is that blocking up the hatchway?"' said the doctor, as some dark
body nearly filled the entire aperture.

Presently the half-naked figure of Serjeant Quacco descended the
ladder.  He paid no attention to me, or any body else; but spoke to
some one on deck in the Eboe tongue, when his wife appeared at the
coamings of the hatchway, hugging and fondling the identical and most
abominable little graven image we had seen in the fetish hut, as if it
had been her child--her own flesh and blood.  She handed it down to the
black Serjeant, who placed it in a corner, nuzzling, and rubbing his
nose all over it, as if he had been propitiating the tiny Moloch by the
abjectness of his abasement.  I was curious to see how Lennox would
take all this, but it produced no effect: he looked with a quizzical
expression of countenance at the figure for some time, and then lay
back in his hammock, and seemed to be composing himself to sleep.  I
went on deck, leaving the negro and his sable helpmate below amongst
the men, and was conversing with Mr Sprawl, who had by this time made
his appearance; when we were suddenly startled by a loud shriek from
the negress, who shot up from below, plunged instantly overboard, and
began to swim with great speed towards the shore.  She was instantly
followed by our friend the serjeant, who for a second or two looked
forth after the sable naiad, in an attitude as if the very next moment
he would have followed her.  I hailed the dingy Venus--"Come back, my
dear--come back."  She turned round with a laughing countenance, but
never for a moment hesitated in her shoreward progress.

"What sall become of me!" screamed Serjeant Quacco--"Oh, Lord, I sail
lose my vife--debil fetch dem sailor buccra--cost me feefty
dallar--Lose my vife I--dat de dam little fetish say mosh be save.  Oh,
poor debil dat I is I"--and here followed a long tirade in some African
dialect, that was utterly unintelligible to us.

"My good fellow, don't make such an uproar, will ye?" said I.  "Leave
your wife to her fate: you cannot better yourself if you would die for
it."

"I don't know, massa; I don't know.  Him cost me feefty dallar.
Beside, as massa must have seen, him beautiful! oh, very
beautiful!--and what you tink dem willain asore will do to him?  Ah,
massa, you can't tell what dem will do to him?"

"Why, my good man, what _will_ they do?"

"Eat him, massa, may be; for dey look on him as one who now is
enemy--dat is, dey call me enemy, and dey know him is my vife--Oh,
Lord--feefty dallar--all go, de day dem roast my vife."

I could scarcely refrain from laughing; but on the instant the poor
fellow ran up to the old quartermaster, who was standing near the mast,
admiring the construction of the canoe,--as beautiful a skiff, by the
way, as was ever scooped out of tree.  "Help me, old man; help me to
launch de canoe.  I must go on sore--I must go on sore."

The seaman looked at me--I nodded; and, taking the hint, he instantly
lent Blackie a hand.  The canoe was launched overboard, and the next
moment Serjeant Quacco was paddling after his adored, that had cost him
fifty dollars, in double-quick time.

He seemed, so far as we could judge, to be rapidly overtaking her, when
the little promontory of the creek hid them from our view; and under
the impression that we had seen the last of him, I began to hug myself
in the hope of getting over the bar that forenoon.  An hour might have
elapsed, and all remained quiet, except at the bar, and even there the
thunder and hissing of the breakers began to fail.  As the tide made,
Lanyard saw all ready to go to sea; but I was soon persuaded, that,
from the extreme heaviness of the ground swell that rolled in, there
was no chance of our extricating ourselves until the evening at the
soonest, or it might be next morning, when the young ebb would give us
a lift; so we were walking up and down, to while away the time, when
poor Lennox, who had by this time come on deck, said, on my addressing
him, that he had seen small jets of white smoke rise up from among the
green mangroves now and then; and although he had not heard any report,
yet he was persuaded they indicated musket-shots.

"It may all be as you say, Lennox; but I hope we shall soon be clear of
this accursed river, and then they may blaze away at each other as much
as they please."

The words were scarcely out of my mouth, when we not only saw the
smoke, but heard the rattle of musketry, and presently a small black
speck shot rapidly beyond the headland or cape, that shut in our view,
on the larboard side, up the river.

On its nearer approach, we soon perceived that it was our friend Quacco
once more, in his small dory of a canoe, with the little fetish god
stuck over the bow; but there was no appearance of his wife.

As he drew closer to the vessel, the man appeared absolutely frantic.
He worked and sculled away with his paddle as if he had been mad; and
when at last he got on deck, having

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