“Sit down, doctor,” said the president—”take some wine; can recommend the madeira—claret but so-so—your health.”
The doctor bowed, and soon became as happy and merry as the rest; so we carried on until about ten o’clock, when the lights began to waltz a little, and propagate also, and I found I had got enough, or, peradventure, a little more than enough, when the senior captain rose, and walked very composedly out of the room—but I noticed him pinch the doctor’s shoulder as he passed.
The medico thereupon stole quietly after him; but we did not seem to miss either—a young sub had usurped the deserted throne, and there we were all once more in full career, singing and bousing, and cracking bad jokes to our heart’s content. By-and-by in comes the doctor once more.
“Doctor,” quoth young sub, “take some wine; can’t recommend the madeira this time,” mimicking his predecessor very successfully; “the claret, you know, has been condemned, but a little hot brandy-and-water, eh?”
The doctor once more bowed his pate, made his hot stuff, and volunteered a song. After he had finished, and we had all hammered on the table to his honour and glory until everything danced again, as if it had been a matter of very trivial concern, he said, “Sorry I was away so long; but old Spatterdash has got a deuced thick skin, I can tell you—could scarcely get the lancet into him: I thought I should have had to send for a spring phleme, to tip him the veterinary, you know—and he won’t take physic; so I fear he will have but a poor chance.”
Spatterdash was no other than mine host who had just vacated.
“What! do you really think he is in for it?” said the second oldest captain, who sat next me; and as he spoke he drew his leg from beneath the table, and turning out his dexter heel, seemed to contemplate the site of the prospective fixed spur.
“I do, indeed,” quoth Dr Plaget. He died within three days!
But as I do not intend to write an essay on yellow fever, I will make an end, and get on shipboard as fast as I can, after stating one strong fact, authenticated to me by many unimpeachable witnesses. It is this; that this dreadful epidemic, or contagious fever—call it which you will—has never appeared, or been propagated, at or beyond an altitude of 3000 feet above the level of the sea, although people seized with it on the hot sultry plains, and removed thither, have unquestionably died. In a country like Jamaica, with a range of lofty mountains, far exceeding this height, intersecting the island through nearly its whole length, might not Government, after satisfying themselves of the truth of the fact, improve on the hint? Might not a main-guard suffice in Kingston, for instance, while the regiments were in quarters half-way up the Liguanea Mountains, within twelve miles’ actual distance from the town, and within view of it, so that during the day, by a semaphore on the mountain, and another at the barrack of the outpost, a constant and instantaneous communication could be kept up, and, if need were, by lights in the night?
The admiral, for instance, had a semaphore in the stationary flag-ship at Port Royal, which communicated with another at his Pen, or residence, near Kingston; and this, again, rattled off the information to the mountain retreat, where he occasionally retired to careen; and it is fitting to state also, that in all the mountain districts of Jamaica which I visited there is abundance of excellent water and plenty of fuel. These matters are worth consideration, one would think; however, allons—it is no business of Tom Cringle’s.
Speaking of telegraphing, I will relate an anecdote here, if you will wait until I mend my pen. I had landed at Greenwich wharf on duty—this was the nearest point of communication between Port Royal and the Admiral’s Pen— where, finding the flag-lieutenant, he drove me up in his ketureen to lunch. While we were regaling ourselves, the old signal-man came into the piazza, and with several most remarkable obeisances gave us to know that there were flags hoisted on the signal-mast at the mountain settlement, of which he could make nothing—the uppermost was neither the interrogative, the affirmative, nor the negative, nor, in fact, anything that with the book he could make sense of.
“Odd enough,” said the lieutenant; “hand me the glass,” and he peered away for half a minute. “Confound me if I can make heads or tails of it either; there, Cringle, what do you think? How do you construe it?”
I took the telescope. Uppermost there was hoisted on the signal-mast a large table-cloth, not altogether immaculate, and under it a towel, as I guessed, for it was too opaque for bunting, and too white, although I could not affirm that it was fresh out of the fold either.
“I am puzzled,” said I, as I spied away again. Meanwhile, there was no acknowledgment made at our semaphore. “There, down they go,” I continued—”Why, it must be a mistake—Stop, here’s a new batch going up above the green trees—There goes the tablecloth once more, and the towel, and—deuce take me, if I can compare the lowermost to anything but a dishclout—why, it must be a dishclout.”
The flags, or substitutes for them, streamed another minute in the breeze, but as there was still no answer made from our end of the string, they were once more hauled down. We waited another minute—”Why, here goes the same signal up again, tablecloth, towel, dishclout, and all—What the diable have we got here? A red ball, two pennants under—What can that mean?—Ball—it is the bonnet-rouge, or I am a Dutchman, with two short streamers”—Another look—”A red night-cap and a pair of stockings, by all that is portentous!” exclaimed I.
“Ah, I see, I see!” said the lieutenant, laughing—”signalman, acknowledge it.”
It was done, and down came all the flags in a trice. It appeared, on inquiry, that the washing-cart, which ought to have been sent up that morning, had been forgotten; and the Admiral and his secretary having ridden out, there was no one who could make the proper signal for it. So the old housekeeper took this singular method of having the cart despatched, and it was sent off accordingly.
For the first week after I entered on my new office, I was busily engaged on board, during which time my mind was quite made up, that the most rising man in his Majesty’s service, beyond all compare, was Lieutenant Thomas Cringle, third of the Firebrand. During this eventful period I never addressed a note to any friend on shore, or to a brother officer, without writing in the left-hand lower corner of the envelope “Lieutenant Cringle,” and clapping three dashing &c. &c. &c.’s below the party’s name for whom it was intended.
“Must let ‘em know that an officer of my rank in the service knows somewhat of the courtesies of life, eh?”
In about ten days, however, we had gotten the ship into high order and ready for sea, and now the glory and honour of command, like my only epaulet, that had been soaked while on duty in one or two showers, and afterwards regularly bronzed in the sun, began to tarnish, and lose the new gloss, like everything else in this weary world. It was about this time, while sitting at breakfast in the gunroom one fine morning, with the other officers of our mess, gossiping about I hardly remember what, that we heard the captain’s voice on deck.
“Call the first-lieutenant.”
“He is at breakfast, sir,” said the man, whoever he might have been, to whom the order was addressed.
“Never mind then—Here, boatswain’s mate—Pipe away the men who were captured in the boats; tell them to clean themselves, and send Mr ——— to me”—(this was the officer who had been taken prisoner along with them in the first attack)—”they are wanted in Kingston at the trial to-day—Stop—tell Mr Cringle also to get ready to go in the gig.”
The pirates, to the amount of forty-five, had been transferred to Kingston jail some days previously, preparatory to their trial, which, as above mentioned, was fixed for this day.
We pulled cheerily up to Kingston, and, landing at the Wherry wharf, marched along the hot dusty streets, under a broiling sun, Captain Transom, the other lieutenant, and myself, in full puff, leading the van, followed by about fourteen seamen, in white straw-hats, with broad black ribbons, and clean white frocks and trousers, headed by a boatswain’s ma
te, with his silver whistle hung round his neck—as respectable a tail as any Christian could desire to swing behind him; and, man for man, I would willingly have perilled my promotion upon their walloping, with no offensive weapons but their stretchers, the Following, clay-mores and all, of any proud, disagreeable, would-be-mighty mountaineer, that ever turned up his supercilious, whisky-blossomed snout at Bailie Jarvie. On they came, square-shouldered, narrow-flanked, tall, strapping fellows, tumbling and rolling about the piazzas in knots of three and four, until, at the corner of King Street, they came bolt up upon a well-known large fat, brown lady, famous for her manufacture of spruce beer.
“Avast, avast a bit,” sang out one of the topmen; “let the nobs heave ahead, will ye, and let’s have a pull.”
“Here, old Mother Slush,” sang out another of the cutter’s crew—”Hand us up a dozen bottles of spruce, do you hear?”
“Dozen battle of pruce!” groaned the old woman—”who sall pay me?”
“Why, do you think the Firebrands are thieves, you old canary, you?”
“How much, eh?” said the boatswain’s mate.
“Twelve feepennies,” quoth the matron.
“Oh, ah!” said one of the men—”Twelve times five is half-a-crown; there’s a dollar for you, old mother Popandchokem—now give me back five shillings.”
“Eigh, oh!” whined out the spruce merchant; “you dem rascal, who tell you that your dollar more wort den any one else money—eh? How can give you back five shilling and keep back twelve feepenny—eh?”
The culprit, who had stood the Cocker of the company, had by this time gained his end, which was to draw the fat damsel a step or two from the large tub half-full of water, where the bottles were packed, and to engage her attention by stirring up her bile, or corruption, as they call it in Scotland, while his messmates instantly seized the opportunity, and a bottle apiece also; and, as I turned round to look for them, there they all were in a circle taking the meridian altitude of the sun, or as if they had been taking aim at the pigeons on the eaves of the houses above them with Indian mouth-tubes.
They then replaced the bottles in the tub, paid the woman more than she asked; but, by way of taking out the change, they chucked her stern foremost into the water amongst her merchandise, and then shouldered the vessel, old woman and all, and away they staggered with her, the empty bottles clattering together in the water, and the old lady swearing, and bouncing, and squattering amongst them, while Jack shouted to her to hold her tongue, or they would let her go by the run bodily. Thus they stumped in the wake of their captain, until he arrived at the door of the court-house, to the great entertainment of the bystanders, cutting the strings that confined the corks of the stone bottles as they bowled along, popping the spruce into each other’s faces, and the faces of the negroes, as they ran out of the stores to look at Jack in his frolic, and now and then taking a shot at the old woman’s cockernony itself, as she was held, kicking and spurring, high above their heads.
At length the captain, who was no great way ahead, saw what was going on, which was the signal for doucing the whole affair, spruce-woman, tub, and bottles; and the party, gathering themselves up, mustered close aboard of us, as grave as members of the General Assembly.
The regular court-house of the city being under repair, the Admiralty Sessions were held in a large room occupied temporarily for the purpose. At one end, raised two steps above the level of the floor, was the bench, on which were seated the Judge of the Admiralty Court, supported by two post-captains in full uniform, who are ex-officio judges of this court in the colonies, one on each side. On the right, the jury, composed of merchants of the place and respectable planters of the neighbourhood, were enclosed in a sort of box, with a common white pine railing separating it from the rest of the court. There was a long table in front of the bench, at which a lot of black-robed devil’s limbs of lawyers were ranged—but both amongst them, and on the bench, the want of the cauliflower wigs was sorely felt by me, as well as by the seamen, who considered it little less than murder, that men in crops—black shock-pated fellows—should sit in judgment on their fellow-creatures, where life and death were in the scales.
On the left hand of the bench, the motley public—white, black, and of every intermediate shade—were grouped; as also in front of the dock, which was large. It might have been made with a view to the possibility of fifteen unfortunates or so being arraigned at one time; but now there were no fewer than forty-three jammed and pegged together into it, like sheep in a Smithfield pen the evening before market-day. These were the forty thieves—the pirates. They were all, without exception, clean, well-shaven, and decently rigged in white trousers, linen or check shirts, and held their broad Panama sombreros in their hands.
Most of them wore the red silk sash round the waist. They had generally large bushy whiskers, and not a few had ear-rings of massive gold (why call wearing ear-rings puppyism?—Shakespeare wore ear-rings, or the Chandos portrait lies), and chains of the same metal round their necks, supporting, as I concluded, a crucifix, hid in the bosom of the shirt.—A Spaniard can’t murder a man comfortably if he has not his crucifix about him.
They were, collectively, the most daring, intrepid, Salvator-Rosa-looking men I had ever seen. Most of them were above the middle size, and the spread of their shoulders, the grace with which their arms were hung, and finely developed muscles of the chest and neck, the latter exposed completely by the folding back of their shirt-collars, cut large and square, after the Spanish fashion, beat the finest boat’s crew we could muster all to nothing. Some of them were of mixed blood, that is, the cross between the European Spaniard and the aboriginal Indian of Cuba—the latter a race long since sacrificed on the altar of Mammon, the white man’s god.
Their hair, generally speaking, was long, and curled over the forehead black and glossy, or hung down to their shoulders in ringlets, that a dandy of the second Charles’s time would have given his little finger for. The forehead in most was high and broad, and of a clear olive, the nose straight, springing boldly from the brow, the cheeks oval, and the mouth—every Spaniard has a beautiful mouth, until he spoils it with the beastly cigar, as far as his well-formed firm lips can be spoiled; but his teeth he generally does destroy early in life. Take the whole, however, and deduct for the teeth, I had never seen so handsome a set of men; and I am sure no woman, had she been there, would have gainsaid me. They stood up, and looked forth upon their judges and the jury like brave men, desperadoes though they were. They were, without exception, calm and collected, as if aware that they had small chance of escape, but still determined not to give that chance away. One young man especially attracted my attention, from the bold, cool self-possession of his bearing. He was in the very front of the dock, and dressed in no way different from the rest, so far as his under garments were concerned, unless it were that they were of a finer quality. He wore a short green velvet jacket, profusely studded with knobs and chains, like small chain-shot, of solid gold, similar to the shifting button lately introduced by our dandies in their waistcoats. It was not put on, but hung on one shoulder, being fastened across his breast by the two empty sleeves tied together in a knot. He also wore the red silk sash, through which a broad gold cord ran twining like the strand of a rope. He had no ear-rings, but his hair was the most beautiful I had ever seen in a male—long and black, jet-black and glossy. It was turned up and fastened in a club on the crown of his head with a large pin, I should rather say skewer, of silver; but the outlandishness of the fashion was not offensive, when I came to take into the account the beauty of the plaiting, and of the long raven lovelocks that hung down behind each of his small transparent ears, and the short Hyperion-like curls that clustered thick and richly on his high, pile, broad forehead. His eyes were large, black, and swimming, like a woman’s; his nose straight and thin; and such a mouth, such an under-lip, full, and melting; and teeth regular and white, and utterly free from the pollution of tobacco; and a beautifully-moulded small c
hin, rounding off and merging in his round, massive, muscular neck.
I had never seen so fine a face, such perfection of features, and such a clear, dark, smooth skin. It was a finer face than Lord Byron’s, whom I had seen more than once, and wanted that hellish curl of the lip; and as to figure, he could, to look at him, at any time have eaten up his lordship, stoop and roop, to his breakfast. It was the countenance, in a word, of a most beautiful youth, melancholy, indeed, and anxious—evidently anxious; for the large pearls that coursed each other down his forehead and cheek, and the slight quivering of the under-lip, every now and then evinced the powerful struggle that was going on within. His figure was, if possible, superior to his face. It was not quite filled up—set, as we call it—but the arch of his chest was magnificent, his shoulders square, arms well put on; but his neck—”Have you seen the Apollo, neighbour?”—”No, but the cast of it at Somerset House.”—”Well, that will do—so you know the sort of neck he had.” His waist was fine, hips beautifully moulded; and although his under limbs were shrouded in his wide trousers, they were evidently of a piece with what was seen and developed; and this was vouched for by the turn of his ankle and well-shaped foot, on which he wore a small Spanish grass slipper, fitted with great nicety. He was at least six feet two in height; and such as I have described him, there he stood, with his hands grasping the rail before him, and looking intently at a wigless lawyer who was opening the accusation, while he had one ear turned a little towards the sworn interpreter of the court, whose province it was, at every pause, to explain to the prisoners what the learned gentleman was stating. From time to time he said a word or two to a square-built, dark, ferocious-looking man standing next him, apparently about forty years of age, who, as well as his fellow-prisoners, appeared to pay him great respect; and I could notice the expression of their countenances change as his rose or fell.