“Come,” said I, “my dear sir, you are growing satirical.”
“Quarter less three,” sang out the leadsman in the chains.
We were now running in past the end of Hog Island to the port of Nassau, where the lights were sparkling brightly. We anchored, but it was too late to go on shore that evening, so, after a parting glass of swizzle, we all turned in for the night.
To be near the wharf, for the convenience of refitting, I had run the schooner close in, being aware of the complete security of the harbour, so that in the night I could feel the little vessel gently take the ground. This awoke me and several of the crew; for, accustomed as sailors are to the smooth bounding motion of a buoyant vessel rising and falling on the heaving bosom of the ocean, the least touch on the solid ground, or against any hard floating substance, thrills to their hearts with electrical quickness. Through the thin bulkhead I could hear the officers speaking to each other.
“We are touching the ground,” said one.
“And if we be, there is no sea here—all smooth—land-locked entirely,” quoth another.
So all hands of us, except the watch on deck, snoozed away once more into the land of deep forgetfulness. We had all for some days previously been overworked, and over-fatigued; indeed, ever since the action had caused the duty of the little vessel to devolve on one-half of her original crew, those who had escaped had been subjected to great privations, and were nearly worn out.
It might have been four bells in the middle watch when I was awakened by the discontinuance of Mr Swop’s heavy step overhead; but judging that the poor fellow might have toppled over into a slight temporary snooze, I thought little of it, persuaded as I was that the vessel was lying in the most perfect safety. In this belief I was falling over once more, when I heard a short startled grunt from one of the men in the steerage—then a sudden sharp exclamation from another-a louder ejaculation of surprise from a third—and presently Mr Wagtail, who was sleeping on a mattress spread on the locker below me, gave a spluttering cough. A heavy splash followed, and, simultaneously, several of the men forward shouted out, “Ship full of water—water up to our hammocks;” while Waggy, who had rolled off his narrow couch, sang out at the top of his pipe, “I am drowned, Bang. Tom Cringle, my dear—Gelid, I am drowned—we are all drowned—the ship is at the bottom of the sea, and we shall have eels enough here, if we had none at Biggleswade. Oh! murder! murder!”
“Sound the well,” I could hear Tailtackle, who had run on deck, sing out.
“No use in that,” I called out, as I splashed out of my warm cot up to my knees in water. “Bring a light, Mr Tailtackle; a bottom plank must have started, or a butt, or a hidden-end. The schooner is full of water beyond doubt, and as the tide is still making, stand by to hoist out the boats, and get the wounded into them. But don’t be alarmed, men; the schooner is on the ground, and it is near high-water. So be cool and quiet. Don’t bother now—don’t—”
By the time I had finished my extempore speech I was on deck, where I soon found that, in very truth, there was no use in sounding the well, or manning the pumps either, as some wounded plank had been crushed out bodily by the pressure of the vessel when she took the ground; and there she lay—the tidy little Wave—regularly bilged, with the tide flowing into her.
Every one of the crew was now on the alert. Bedding and bags and some provisions were placed in the boats of the schooner, and several craft from the shore, hearing the alarm, were now alongside; so danger there was none, except that of catching cold, and I therefore bethought me of looking in on my guests in the cabin. I descended and waded into our late dormitory with a candle in my hand, and the water nearly up to my waist. I there found my steward, also with a light, splashing about in the water, catching a stray hat here, and fishing up a spare coat there, and anchoring a chair, with a piece of spunyarn, to the pillar of the small side-berth on the starboard side, while our friend Massa Aaron was coolly lying in his cot on the larboard, the bottom of which was by this time within an inch of the surface of the water, and bestirring himself in an attempt to get his trousers on, which by some lucky chance he had stowed away under his pillow overnight; and there he was, sticking up first one peg and then another, until, by sidling and shifting in his narrow lair, he contrived to rig himself in his nether garments. “But, steward, my good man,” he was saying when I entered, “where is my coat, eh?” The man groped for a moment down in the water, which his nose dipped into, with his shirt-sleeves tucked up to his armpits, and then held up some dark object, that, to me at least, looked like a piece of black cloth hooked out of a dyer’s vat. Alas! this was Massa Aaron’s coat; and while the hats were bobbing at each other in the other corner like seventy-fours, with a squadron of shoes in their wakes, and Wagtail was sitting in the side-berth, with his wet night-gown drawn about him, his muscular development in high relief through the clinging drapery, and bemoaning his fate in the most pathetic manner that can be conceived, our ally Aaron exclaimed, “I say, Tom, how do you like the cut of my Sunday coat, eh?” while our friend Paul Gelid, who, it seems, had slept through the whole row, was at length startled out of his sleep, and, sticking one of his long shanks over the side of his cot in act to descend, immersed it in the cold salt brine.
“Lord, Wagtail!” he exclaimed, “my dear fellow, the cabin is full of water— we are sinking—ah! Deucedly annoying to be drowned in this hole, amidst dirty water, like a tubful of ill-washed potatoes—ah.”
“Tom—Tom Cringle,” shouted Mr Bang at this juncture, while he looked over the edge of his cot on the stramash below, “saw ever any man the like of that? Why, see there—there, just under your candle, Tom—a bird’s nest floating about with a mavis in it, as I am a gentleman.”
“D——n your bird’s nest and mavis too, whatever that may be,” roared little Mr Pepperpot. “By Jupiter, it is my wig with a live rat in it!”
“Confound your wig!—ah,” quoth Paul, as the steward fished up what I took at first for a pair of brimful water-stoups. “Zounds! look at my boots.”
“And confound both the wig and boots, say I,” sang out Mr Bang. “Look at my Sunday coat. Why, who set the ship on fire, Tom?”
Here his eye caught mine, and a few words sufficed to explain how we were situated, and then the only bother was how to get ashore, and where we were to sojourn, so as to have our clothes dried, as nothing could now be done until daylight. I therefore got our friends safely into a Nassau boat alongside, with their wet trunks and portmanteaus in charge of their black servants, and left them to fish their way to their lodging-house as they best could. BY this our negro captives had been landed, and delivered over to the proper authorities, and the wounded and the sound part of the crew had been placed on board of two merchant brigs that lay close to us: the masters of them proving accommodating men, I got them alongside, as the tide flowed, one on the starboard, the other on the larboard side, right over the Wave; and next forenoon, when they took the ground, we rigged two spare topmasts from one vessel to another, and making the main and fore-rigging of the schooner fast to them as the tide once more made, we weighed her, and floated her alongside of the sheer-hulk, against which we were enabled to heave her out, so as to get at the leak, and then by rigging bilge-pumps we contrived to free her and keep her dry. The damaged plank was soon removed; and, being in a fair way to surmount all my difficulties, about half-past five in the evening I equipped myself in dry clothes, and proceeded on shore to call on our friends at their new domicile. When I entered I was shown into the dining-hall by my ally, Pegtop.
“Massa will be here presently, sir.”
“Oh—tell him he need not hurry himself. But how are Mr Bang and his friends?”
“Oh, dem all wery so-so, only Massa Wagtail hab take soch a terrible cold, dat him tink he is going to dead; him wery sorry for himshef, for true, massa.”
“But where are the gentlemen, Pegtop?”
“All, every one on dem, is in him bed. Wet clothes have been drying all
day.”
“And when do they mean to dine?”
Here Pegtop doubled himself up, and laughed like to split himself. “Dem is all dining in bed, massa. Shall I show you to dem?”
“I shall he obliged; but don’t let me intrude. Give my compliments, and say I have looked in simply to inquire after their health.”
Here Mr Wagtail shouted from the inner apartment.
“Hillo! Tom, my boy!—Tom Cringle!—here, my lad here!”
I was shown into the room from whence the voice proceeded, which happened to be Massa Aaron’s bedroom; and there were my three friends stretched on sofas, in their night-clothes with a blanket, sheet, and counterpane over each forming three sides of a square round a long table, on which a most capital dinner was smoking, with wines of several kinds, and a perfect galaxy of wax candles, and their sable valets, in nice clean attire and smart livery-coats, waiting on them.
“Ah, Tom,” quoth Massa Paul, “delighted to see you;—come, you seem to have dry clothes on, so take the head of the table.”
I did so, and broke ground forthwith with great zeal.
“Tom, a glass of wine, my dear,” said Aaron. “Don’t you admire us—classical, after the manner of the ancients, eh? Wagtail’s head-dress and Paul’s night-cap—oh, the comforts of a woollen one! Ah, Tom, Tom, the Greeks had no Kilmarnock—none.”
We all carried on cheerily, and Bang began to sparkle.
“Well, now since you have weighed the schooner and found not much wanting, I feel my spirits rising again.—A glass of champagne, Tom—your health, boy.—The dip the old hooker has got must have surprised the rats and cockroaches. Do you know, Tom, I really have an idea of writing a history of the cruise; only I am deterred from the melancholy consciousness that every blockhead nowadays fancies he can write.”
“Why, my dear sir, are you not coquetting for a compliment? Don’t we all know that many of the crack articles in Ebony’s Mag—”
“Bah,” clapping his hand on my mouth; “hold your tongue; all wrong in that—”
“Well, if it be not you then, I scarcely know to whom to attribute them.— Until lately, I only knew you as the warmhearted West Indian gentleman; but now I am certain I am to—”
“Tom, hold your tongue, my beautiful little man. For although I must plead guilty to having mixed a little in literary society in my younger days—
“Alas! my heart, those days are gane.”
Ah, Mr Swop,” continued Mr Bang, as the master was ushered into the room. “Plate and glasses for Mr Swop.”
The sailor bowed, perched himself on the very edge of his chair, scarcely within long arm’s-length of the table, and sitting bolt upright as if he had swallowed a spare studding-sail-boom, drank our healths and smoothed down his hair on his brow.
“Captain, I come to report the schooner ready to—”Poo,” rattled out Mr Bang; “time for your tale by-and-by;—help yourself to some of that capital beef, Peter,—so—Yes, my love,” continued our friend, resuming his yarn, “I once coped even with John Wilson himself. Yea, in the fulness of my powers, I feared not even the Professor.”
“Indeed!” said I.
“True, as I am a gentleman. Why, I once, in a public trial of skill, beat him, even him, by eighteen measured inches, from toe to heel.”
I stared.
“I was the slighter man of the two, certainly. Still, in a flying leap, I always had the best of it, until he astonished the world with the ‘Isle of Palms.’ From that day forth my springiness and elasticity left me. ‘Fallen was my muscles’ brawny vaunt.’ I quailed. My genius stood rebuked before him. Nevertheless at hop-step-and-jump I was his match still. When out came the ‘City of the Plague!’ From that hour the Great Ostrich could not hold the candle to the Flying Philosopher. And now, Heaven help me! I can scarcely cover nineteen feet, with every advantage of ground for the run. It is true, the Professor was always in condition, and never required training; now, unless I had time for my hard food, I was seldom in wind.”
Mr Peter Swop, emboldened and brightened by the wine he had so industriously swilled, and willing to contribute his quota of conversation, having previously jumbled in his noddle what Mr Bang had said about an ostrich and hard food, asked across the table
“Do you believe ostriches eat iron, Mr Bang?”
Mr Bane, slowly put down his glass, and, looking with the most imperturbable seriousness the innocent master right in the face, exclaimed—
“Ostriches eat iron!—Do I believe ostriches eat iron, did you say, Mr Swop? Will you have the great kindness to tell me if this glass of madeira be poison, Mr Swop? Why, when Captain Cringle there was in the Bight of Benin, from which
‘One comes out
Where a hundred go in,’
on board of the—what d’ye call her? I forget her name—they had a tame ostrich, which was the wonder of the whole squadron. At the first go-off it had plenty of food, but at length they had to put it on short allowance of a Winchester bushel of tenpenny nails and a pumpbolt a day; but their supplies failing, they had even to reduce this quantity, whereby the poor bird, after unavailing endeavours to get at the iron ballast, was driven to pick out the iron bolts of the ship in the clear moonlight nights, when no one was thinking of it; so that the craft would soon have been a perfect wreck. And as the commodore would not hear of the creature being killed, Tom here undertook to keep it on copper bolts and sheathing until they reached Cape Coast. But it would not do; the copper soured on its stomach and it died. Believe an ostrich eats iron, quotha! But to return to the training for the jump—I used to stick to beefsteaks and a thimbleful of Burton ale; and again I tried the dried knuckle parts of legs of five-year-old blackfaced muttons; but, latterly, I trained best on birsled peas and whisky—”
“On what?” shouted I, in great astonishment; “on what?”
“Yes, my boys; parched peas and whisky. Charge properly with birsled peas, and if you take a caulker just as you begin your run, there is the linstock to the gun for you, and away you fly through the air on the principle of the Congreve rocket. Well might that amiable, and venerable, and most learned Theban, Cockibus Bungo, who always held the stakes on these great occasions, exclaim, in his astonishment, to Cheesey, the Janitor of many days—as
‘Like fire from flint I glanced away,’
disdaining the laws of gravitation—
By Mercury, I swear—yea, by his winged heel, I shall have at the Professor yet, if I live, and whisky and birsled peas fail me not.”
Here Paul and I laughed outright; but Mr Wagtail appeared out of sorts somehow; and Swop looked first at one and then at another, with a look of the most ludicrous uncertainty as to whether Mr Bang was quizzing him, or telling a verity.
“Why, Wagtail,” said Gelid, “what ails you, my boy?”
I looked towards our little amiable fat friend. His face was much flushed, although I learned that he had been unusually abstemious, and he appeared heated and restless, and had evidently feverish symptoms about him.
“Who’s there?” said Wagtail, looking towards the door with a raised look.
It was Tailtackle, with two of the boys carrying a litter, followed by Peter Mangrove, as if he had been chief mourner at a funeral. Out of the litter a black paw, with fishes or splints whipped round it by a band of spunyarn, protruded, and kept swaying about like a pendulum.
“What have you got there, Mr Tailtackle?”
The gunner turned round.
“Oh, it is a vagary of Peter Mangrove’s, sir. Not contented with getting the doctor to set Sneezer’s starboard fore-leg, he insists on bringing him away from amongst the people at the capstan-house.”
“True, massa—Massa Tailtackle say true; de poor dumb dog never shall cure him leg, none at all, ‘mong de men dere; dey all love him so mosh, and make of him so mosh, and stuff him wid salt wittal so mosh, till him blood inflammation like a hell; and den him so good temper, and so gratify wid dere attention, dat I believe him will eat till him kicke
riboo of sorefut [surfeit, I presumed]; and, beside, I know de dog healt will instantly mend if him see you. Oh, Massa Aaron [our friend was smiling], it not like you to make fun of poor black fellow, when him is take de part of soch old friend as poor Sneezer. De captain dere cannot laugh, dat is if him will only tink on dat fearful cove at Puerto Escondido, and what Sneezer did for bote of we dere.”
Well, well, Mangrove, my man,” said Mr Bang, “I will ask leave of my friends here to have the dog bestowed in a corner of the piazza; so let the boys lay him down there, and here is a glass of grog for you—so. Now go back again,”—as the poor fellow had drunk our healths.
Here Sneezer, who had been still as a mouse all this while, put his black snout out of his hammock, and began to cheep and whine in his gladness at seeing his master, and the large tears ran down his coal-black muzzle as he licked my hand, while every now and then he gave a short fondling bark, as if he had said, “Ah, master, I thought you had forgotten me altogether, ever since the action where I got my leg broke by a grape-shot, but I find I am mistaken.”
“Now, Tailtackle, what say you?”
“We may ease off the tackles to-morrow afternoon,” said the gunner, “and right the schooner, sir, we have put in a dozen cashaw knees, as tough as leather, and bolted the planks tight and fast. You saw these heavy quarters did us no good, sir; I hope you will beautify her again, now since the Spaniard’s shot has pretty well demolished them already. I hope you won’t replace them, sir. I hope Captain Transom may see her as she should be—as she was when your honour had your first pleasure cruise in her.” Here—but I may have dreamed it—I thought the quid in the honest fellow’s cheek stuck out in higher relief than usual for a short space.