“I will undertake that she shall be sent safe to England, my good man,” said Mr Bang.
The felon looked at him—drew one hand across his eyes, which were misty with tears, held down his head, and again looked up; at length he found his tongue. “That God who rewardeth good deeds here, that God whom I have offended, before whom I must answer for my sins by daybreak to-morrow, will reward you; I can only thank you.” He seized Mr Bang’s hand and kissed it.
With heavy hearts we left the miserable group; and I may mention here, that Mr Bang was as good as his word, and paid the poor woman’s passage home, and, so far as I know, she is now restored to her family.
We slept that night at Mr S——’s, and as the morning dawned we mounted our horses, which our worthy host had kindly desired to be ready, in order to enable us to take our exercise in the cool of the morning. As we rode past the Place d’Armes, or open space in front of the president’s palace, we heard sounds of military music, and asked the first chance passenger what was going on. “Execution militaire; or rather,” said the man, “the two sea-captains, who introduced the base money, are to be shot this morning—there, against the rampart.” Of the fact we were aware, but we did not dream that we had ridden so near the whereabouts.
“Ay, indeed!” said Mr Bang. He looked towards the captain. “My dear Transom, I have no wish to witness so horrible a sight, but still—what say you—shall we pull up, or ride on?”
The truth was, that Captain Transom and myself were both of us desirous of seeing the execution—from what impelling motive, let learned blockheads, who have never gloated over a hanging, determine; and quickly it was determined that we should wait and witness it.
First advanced a whole regiment of the president’s guards, then a battalion of infantry of the line, close to which followed a whole bevy of priests clad in white, which contrasted conspicuously with their brown and black faces. After them marched two firing parties of twelve men each, drafted indiscriminately, as it would appear, from the whole garrison; for the grenadier cap was there intermingled with the glazed shako, of the battalion company and the light morion of the dismounted dragoon. Then came the prisoners; the elder culprit respectably clothed in a white shirt, waistcoat, and trousers, and blue coat, with an Indian silk yellow handkerchief bound round his head. His lips were compressed together with an unnatural firmness, and his features were sharpened like those of a corpse. His complexion was ashy blue. His eyes were half shut, but every now and then he opened them wide, and gave a startling rapid glance about him, and occasionally he staggered a little in his gait. As he approached the place of execution, his eyelids fell, his under-jaw dropped, his arms hung dangling by his side like empty sleeves; still he walked on, mechanically keeping time, like an automaton, to the measured tread of the soldiery. His fellow-sufferer followed him. His eye was bright, his complexion healthy, his step firm, and he immediately recognised us in the throng, made a bow to Captain Transom, and held out his hand to Mr Bang, who was nearest to him, and shook it cordially. The procession moved on. The troops formed into three sides of a square, the remaining one being the earthen mound that constituted the rampart of the place. A halt was called. The two firing parties advanced to the sound of muffled drums, and having arrived at the crest of the glacis, right over the counterscarp, they halted on what, in a more regular fortification, would have been termed the covered-way. The prisoners, perfectly unfettered, advanced between them, stepped down with a firm step into the ditch, led each by a grenadier. In the centre of it they turned and kneeled, neither of their eyes being bound. A priest advanced, and seemed to pray with the brown man fervently; another offered spiritual consolation to the Englishman, who seemed now to have rallied his torpid faculties; but he waved him away impatiently, and, taking a book from his bosom, seemed to repeat a prayer from it with great fervour. At this very instant of time Mr Bang caught his eye. He dropped the book on the ground, placed one hand on his heart, while he pointed upwards towards heaven with the other, calling out in a loud clear voice, “Remember!” Aaron bowed. A mounted officer now rode quickly up to the brink of the ditch, and called out “Dépêchez.”
The priests left the miserable men, and all was still as death for a minute. A low solitary tap of the drum—the firing parties came to the recover, and presently, taking the time from the sword of the staff-officer who had spoken, came down to the present, and fired a rattling, straggling volley. The brown man sprang up into the air three or four feet, and fell dead; he had been shot through the heart; but the white man was only wounded, and had fallen, writhing and struggling and shrieking, to the ground. I heard him distinctly call out, as the reserve of six men stepped into the ditch, “Dans la tête, dans la tête.” One of the grenadiers advanced, and, putting his musket close to his face, fired. The ball splashed into his skull through the left eye, setting fire to his hair and clothes and the handkerchief bound round his head, and making the brains and blood flash up all over his face and the person of the soldier who had given him the coup de grace.
A strong murmuring noise, like the rushing of many waters, growled amongst the ranks and the surrounding spectators, while a short sharp exclamation of horror every now and then gushed out shrill and clear, and fearfully distinct, above the appalling monotony.
The miserable man stretched out his legs and arms straight and rigidly, a strong shiver pervaded his whole frame, his jaw fell, his muscles relaxed, and he and his brother in calamity became a portion of the bloody clay on which they were stretched.
* Page 39.
† Page 26.
§ Page 40.
* Page 56.
* Page 69.
† Page 71.
* In the manuscript Log forwarded by Mr Bang, who kindly undertakes to correct the proofs during his friend Cringle’s absence in the North Sea, there is a leaf wafered in here, with the following in Mr Aaron’s own handwriting:—
“Master Tommy has allowed his fancy some small poetical licences in this his Log. First of all, in Chapter II of this volume, he lays me out on the table, and makes the scorpion sting me in the night, at Don Ricardo Campana’s, whereas the villain himself was the hero of the story, and the man on whom Transom played off his tricks. But not content with this, he makes a bad pun, when speaking of Francesca Cangrejo, which he puts into my mouth, forsooth, as if I had not sins enough of my own to answer for. And, secondly, in the present chapter, why, he was himself in very truth the real King of the Netherlands, the integrity of whose low countries was violated, and not poor Wagtail—as thus: Squire Pepperpot, in his delirium, irritated by the part that Cringle had good-naturedly taken in endeavouring to clap the blister on his stomach, watched his opportunity, and when all hands had fallen into a sound sleep, he got up and approached the sofa, where the nautical was snoozing. Tom, honest fellow! dreaming no harm, was luxuriating in the genial climate, and sleeping very much as we are given to believe little pigs do, as described in the old song, so that Pepperpot had no difficulty in applying the argument a posteriori; and having covered up the sleeping man-of-war, with the caustico adhering to his latter end like bird-lime, he retired noiseless as a cat to his own quarters. Time ran on, and when the blister should have risen next morning on Wagtail’s stomach, Captain Cringle could not rise, and the jest went round; but Thomas nevertheless went about as usual, and was the gayest of the gay, dancing and singing; but whenever he dined out, he always carried a brechum with him. This I vouch for. —A. B.”
* “Burden.—Tom was right here; she was within a week of her confinement.—A. B.”
* The present excellent President of the Haytian Republic had at one time been a tailor, I believe.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE THIRD CRUISE OF THE WAVE.
“Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean—roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain:
Man marks the earth with ruin—his control
Stops with the shore,—upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man’s ravage, save his own,
When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.”
Childe Harold.
I HAD been invited to breakfast on board the corvette, on the morning after this; and Captain Transom, Mr Bang, and myself, were comfortably seated at our meal on the quarterdeck, under the awning, screened off by flags from the view of the men. The ship was riding to a small westerly breeze that was rippling up the bight. The ports on each quarter, as well as the two in the stern, were open, through which we had an extensive view of Port-au-Prince and the surrounding country.
“Now, Transom,” said our amigo, Massa Aaron, “I am quite persuaded that the town astern of us there must always have been, and is now, exceedingly unhealthy. Only reflect on its situation: it fronts the west, with the hot sickening afternoon’s sun blazing on it every evening, along the glowing mirror of the calm bight, under whose influence the fat black mud that composes the beach must send up most pestilent effluvia; while in the forenoon it is shut out from the influence of the regular easterly sea-breeze, or trade-wind, by the high land behind. However, as I don’t mean to stay here longer than I can help, it is not my affair; and as Mr S—— will be waiting for us, pray order your carriage, my dear fellow, and let us go on shore.”
The carriage our friend spoke of was the captain’s gig, by this time alongside, ready manned each of the six seamen who composed her crew with his oar resting between his knees, the blade pointed upwards towards the sky. We all got in. “Shove off”—dip fell the oars into the water. “Give way, men”—the good ash staves groaned, and cheeped, and the water buzzed, and away we shot towards the wharf. We landed, and having proceeded to Mr S——’s, we found horses ready for us, to take our promised ride into the beautiful plain of the Cul de Sac, lying to the northward and eastward of the town; the cavalcade being led by Massa Aaron and myself, while Mr S-rode beside Captain Transom.
Aforetime, from the estates situated on this most magnificent plain (which extends about fifteen miles into the interior, while its width varies from ten to five miles, being surrounded by hills on three sides) there used to be produced no less than thirty thousand hogsheads of sugar. This was during the ancien régime; whereas now, I believe, the only articles it yields beyond plantains, yams, and pot herbs for the supply of the town, are a few gallons of syrup, and a few puncheons of tafia, a very inferior kind of rum. The whole extend of the sea-like plain, for there is throughout scarcely any inequality higher than my staff, was once covered with well-cultivated fields and happy homes; but now, alas! with brushwood from six to ten feet high—in truth, by one sea of jungle, through which you have to thread your difficult way along narrow, hot, sandy bridle-paths (with the sand-flies and mosquitoes flaying you alive), which every now and then lead you to some old ruinous courtyard, with the ground strewed with broken boilers and mill-rollers, and decaying hardwood timbers, and crumbling bricks; while, a little farther on, you shall find the blackened roofless walls of what was most probably an unfortunate planter’s once happy home, where the midnight brigand came, and found peace and comfort and all the elegancies of life, and left—blood and ashes; with the wildflowers growing on the window-sills, and the prickly pear on the tops of the walls, while marble steps, and old shutters, and window-hinges, and pieces of china, are strewn all about; the only tenant now being most likely an old miserable negro who has sheltered himself in a coarsely-thatched hut, in a corner of what had once been a gay and well-furnished saloon.
After having extended our ride, under a hot broiling sun, until two o’clock in the afternoon, we hove about and returned towards the town. We had not ridden on our homeward journey above three miles, when we overtook a tall good-looking negro dressed in white Osnaburg trousers rolled up to his knees, and a check shirt. He wore neither shoes nor stockings, but his head was bound round with the usual handkerchief, over which he wore a large glazed cocked-hat, with a most conspicuous Haytian blue-and-red cockade. He was goading on a jackass before him, loaded with a goodly burden apparently; but what it was we could not tell, as the whole was covered by a large sheepskin, with the wool outermost. I was pricking past the man, when Mr S—— sang out to me to shorten sail, and the next moment he startled me by addressing the pedestrian as Colonel Gabaroche. The colonel returned the salute, and seemed in no way put out from being detected in this rather unmilitary predicament. He was going up to Port-au-Prince to take his turn of duty with his regiment. Presently up came another half-naked black fellow, with the same kind of glazed hat and handkerchief under it; but he was mounted, and his nag, was not a bad one by any means. It was Colonel Gabaroche’s captain of grenadiers, Papotiere by name. He was introduced to us, and we all moved jabbering along. At the time I write of, the military force of the Haytian Republic was composed of one-third of the whole male population capable of bearing arms, which third was obliged to be on permanent duty for four months every year; but the individuals of the quota were allowed to follow their callings as merchants, planters, or agriculturists, during the remaining eight months; they were, I believe, fed by government during their four months of permanent duty. The weather, by the time we had ridden a couple of miles farther, began to lower, and presently large heavy drops of rain fell, and, preserving their globular shape, rolled like peas, or rather like bullets, amidst the small finely pulverised dust of the sandy path. “Umbrella” was the word; but this was a luxury unknown to our military friends. However, the colonel immediately unfurled a blanket from beneath the sheepskin, and sticking his head through a hole in the centre of it, there he stalked like a herald in his tabard, with the blanket hanging down before and behind him. As for the captain, he dismounted, disencumbered himself of his trousers, which he crammed under the mat that served him for a saddle, and, taking off his shirt, he stowed it away in the capacious crown of his cocked-hat, while he once more bestrid his Bucephalus in puris naturalibus, but conversing with all the ease in the world and the most perfect sang froid, while the thunder-shower came down in bucketfuls. In about half an hour we arrived at the skirt of the brushwood or jungle, and found on our left hand some rice-fields, which from appearance we could not have distinguished from young wheat; but on a nearer approach, we perceived that the soil, if soil it could be called on which there was no walking, was a soft mud, the only passages through the fields and along the ridges being by planks, on which several of the labourers were standing as we passed, one of whom, turning to look at us, slipped off, and instantly sank amidst the rotten slime up to his waist. The neighbourhood of these rice-swamps is generally extremely unhealthy. At length we got on board the Firebrand, drenched to the skin, to a late dinner, after which it was determined by Captain Transom—of which intention, by the by, with all his familiarity, I had not the smallest previous notice—that I should cross the island to Jacmel, in order to communicate with the merchant-ships loading there; and by the time I returned, it was supposed the Firebrand would be ready for sea, when I was to be detached in the Wave, to whip in the craft at the different outports, after which we were all to sail in a fleet to Port Royal.
“I say, skipper,” quoth Mr Bang, “I have a great mind to ride with Tom; what say you?”
“Why, Aaron, you are using me ill; that shaver is seducing you altogether; but come, you won’t be a week away, and if you want to go, I see no objection.”
It was fixed accordingly, and on the morrow Mr Bang and I completed our arrangements, hired horses and a guide, and all being in order, clothes packed, and everything else made ready for the cruise, we rode out along with Mr S— — (we were to dine and sleep at his house) to view the fortifications on the hill above the town, the site of Christophe’s operations when he besieged the place; and pretty hot work they must have had of it, for in two different places the trenches of the besiegers had been pushed on t
o the very crest of the glacis, and in one the counterscarp had been fairly blown into the ditch, disclosing the gallery of the mine behind, as if it had been a cavern, the crest of the glacis having remained entire. We walked into it, and Mr S—— pointed out where the president’s troops, in Fort Républicain, had countermined, and absolutely entered the other chamber from beneath, after the explosion, and, sword in hand, cut off the storming party (which had by this time descended into the ditch), and drove them up through the breach into the fort, where they were made prisoners.
The assault had been given three times in one night, and he trembled for the town; however, Petion’s courage and indomitable resolution saved them all. For by making a sally from the south gate at grey dawn, even when the firing on the hill was hottest, and turning the enemy’s flank, he poured into the trenches, routed the covering party, stormed the batteries, spiked the guns, and that evening’s sun glanced on the bayonets of King Henry’s troops as they raised the siege, and fell back in great confusion on their lines, leaving the whole of their battering train and a great quantity of ammunition behind them.
Next morning we were called at daylight, and having accoutred ourselves for the journey, we descended, and found two stout ponies, the biggest not fourteen hands high, ready saddled, with old-fashioned demipiques, and large holsters at each of the saddlebows. A very stout mule was furnished for Monsieur Pegtop; and our black guide, who had contracted for our transit across the island, was also in attendance, mounted on a very active, well-actioned horse. We had coffee, and started. By the time we reached Leogane, the sun was high and fierce. Here we breakfasted in a low one-storey building, our host being no smaller man than Major L—— of the Fourth Regiment of the line. We got our chocolate, and eggs, and fricasseed fowl, and roasted yam, and in fact made, even according to friend Aaron’s conception of matters, an exceedingly comfortable breakfast.