Chapter XVI · —The Second Cruise of the Wave

The puncture in Mr Bang’s neck from the boarding-pike was not very deep, still it was an ugly lacerated wound; and if The had not to use his own phrase, been somewhat bullnecked, there is no saying what the consequences might have been.

“Tom, my boy,” said he, after the doctor was done with him, “I am nicely coopered now—nearly as good as new—a little stiffish or so lucky to have such a comfortable coating of muscle, otherwise the carotid would have been in danger. So come here, and take your turn, and I will hold the candle.”

It was dead calm, and as I had desired the cabin to be again used as a cockpit, it was at this time full of poor fellows, waiting to have their wounds dressed, whenever the surgeon could go below. The lantern was brought, and sitting down on a wadding tub, I stripped. The ball, which I knew had lodged in the fleshy part of my left shoulder, had first of all struck me right over the collar-bone, from which it had glanced, and then buried itself in the muscle of the arm, just below the skin, where it stood out, as if it had been a sloe both in shape and colour. The collar-bone was much shattered, and my chest was a good deal shaken, and greatly bruised; but I had perceived nothing of all this at the time I was shot; the sole perceptible sensation was the feeling of cold water running down, and the pinch in the shoulder, as already described. I was much surprised (every man who has been seriously hit being entitled to expatiate) with the extreme smallness of the puncture in the skin through which the ball had entered; you could not have forced a pea through it, and there was scarcely any flow of blood.

“A very simple affair this, sir,” said the surgeon, as he made a minute incision right over the ball, the instrument cutting into the cold dull lead with a cheep, and then pressing his fingers, one on each side of it, it jumped out nearly into Aaron’s mouth.

“A pretty sugar-plum, Tom—if that collar-bone of yours had not been all the harder, you would have been embalmed in a gazette, to use your own favourite expression. But, my good boy, your bruise on the chest is serious; you must go to bed, and take care of yourself.”

Alas! there was no bed for me to go to. The cabin was occupied by the wounded, where the surgeon was still at work. Out of our small crew, nine had been killed, and eleven wounded, counting passengers—twenty out of forty-two—a fearful proportion.

The night had now fallen.

“Pearl, send some of the people aft, and get a spare square-sail from the sailmaker, and....”

“Will the awning not do, sir?”

“To be sure it will,” said I—it did not occur to me. “Get the awning triced up to the stancheons, and tell my steward to get the beds on deck a few flags to shut us in will make the thing complete.”

It was done; and while the sharp cries of the wounded, who were immediately under the knife of the doctor, and the low moans of those whose wounds had been dressed, or were waiting their turn, reached our ears distinctly through the small skylight, our beds were arranged on deck, under the shelter of the awning, a curtain of flags veiling our quarters from the gaze of the crew. Paul Gelid and Pepperpot occupied the starboard side of the little vessel; Aaron Bang and myself the larboard. By this time it was close on eight o’clock in the evening. I had merely looked in on our friends, ensconced as they were in their temporary hurricane house; for I had more work than I could accomplish on deck in repairing damages. Most of our standing, and great part of our running rigging, had been shot away, which the tired crew were busied in splicing and knotting the best way they could. Our mainmast was very badly wounded close to the deck. It was fished as scientifically as our circumstances admitted. The foremast had fortunately escaped—it was untouched; but there were no fewer than thirteen round shot through our hull, five of them between wind and water.

When every thing had been done which ingenuity could devise, or the most determined perseverance execute, I returned to our canvass—shed aft, and found Mr Wagtail sitting on the deck, arranging, with the help of my steward, the supper equipment to the best of his ability. Our meal, as may easily be imagined, was frugal in le extreme—salt beef, biscuit, some roasted yams, and cold grog—some of Aaron’s excellent rum. But I mark it down, that I question if any one of the four who partook of it, ever made so hearty a supper before or since. We worked away at the junk until we had polished the bone, clean as an elephant’s tusk, and the roasted yams disappeared in bushelfuls; while the old rum sank in the bottle, like mercury in the barometer indicating an approaching gale.

“I say, Tom,” quoth Aaron, “how do you feel, my boy?”

“Why, not quite so buoyant as I could wish. To me it has been a day of fearful responsibility.”

“And well it may,” said he. “As for myself, I go to rest with the tremendous consciousness that even I, who am not a professional butcher, have this blessed day shed more than one fellow-creature’s blood-a trembling consideration-and all for what, Tom? You met a big ship in the dark, and desired her to stop. She said she would not—You said, ‘You shall.’—She rejoined, ‘I’ll be d——d if I do.’ And thereupon you set about compelling her; and certainly you have interrupted her course to some purpose, at the trivial cost of the lives of only five or six hundred human beings, whose hearts were beating cheerily in their bosoms within these last six hours, but whose bodies are now food for fishes.”

I was stung.

“At your hands, my dear sir, I did not expect this, and”

“Hush,” said he, “I don’t blame you—it is all right; but why will not the Government at home arrange by treaty that this nefarious trade should be entirely put down? Surely all our victories by sea and land might warrant our stipulating for so much, in place of huggermuggering with doubtful ill-defined treaties, specifying that you Johnny Crapeau, and you Jack Spaniard, shall steal men, and deal in human flesh, in such and such a degree of latitude only, while, if you pick up one single slave a league to the northward or southward of the prescribed line of coast, then we shall blow you out of the water wherever we meet you. Why should poor devils, who live in one degree of latitude, be allowed to be kidnapped, whilst we make it felony to steal their immediate neighbours?” Aaron waxed warm as he proceeded. “Why will not Englishmen lend a hand to put down the slave-trade amongst our opponents in sugar growing, before they so recklessly endeavour to crush slavery in our own worn-out colonies, utterly disregardless of our rights and lives? Mind, Tom, I don’t defend slavery, I sincerely wish we could do without it, but am I to be the only one to pay the piper in compassing its extinction? If, however, it really be that Upas-tree, under whose baleful shade every kindly feeling in the human bosom, whether of master or servant, withers and dies, I ask, who planted it? If it possess the magical, and incredible, and most pestilential quality, that the English gentleman, who shall be virtuous and beneficent, and just in all his ways, before he leaves home, and after he returns home, shall, during his temporary sojourn within its influence become a very Nero for cruelty, and have his warm heart of flesh smuggled out of his bosom, by some hocus pocus, utterly unintelligible to any unprejudiced rational being, or indurated into the flint of the nether millstone, or frozen into a lump of ice.”

“Lord!” ejaculated Wagtail, “only fancy a snowball in a man’s stomach, and in Jamaica too!”

“Hold your tongue, Waggy, my love,” continued Aaron; “if all this were so, I would again ask, who planted it?—say not that we did it—I am a planter, but I did not plant slavery. I found it growing and flourishing, and fostered by the Government, and made my home amongst the branches like a respectable corbie craw, or a pelican in a wild— duck’s nest, with all my pretty little tender black branchers hopping about me, along with numberless other unfortunates, and now find that the tree is being uprooted by the very hands that planted and nourished it, and seduced me to live in it, and all....”

I laughed aloud—“Come, come, my dear sir, you are a perfect Lord Castlereagh in the congruity of your figures. How the deuce can any living thing exist among the poisonous branches of the Upas-tree—or a wild-duck build....”

“Get along with your criticism, Tom—and don’t laugh, hang it, don’t laugh—but who told you that a corbie cannot?”

“Why there are no corbies in Java.”

“Pah—botheration—there are pelicans then; but you know it is not an Upas-tree, you know it is all a chimera, and, like the air-drawn dagger of Macbeth, ‘that there is no such thing.’ Now, that is a good burst, Gelid, my lad, a’nt it?” said Bang, as he drew a long breath, and again launched forth.

“Our Government shall quarrel about sixpence here or sixpence there of discriminative duty in a foreign port, while they have clapped a knife to our throats, and a flaming fagot to our houses, by absurd edicts and fanatical intermeddling with our own colonies, where the slave-trade has notoriously, and to their own conviction, entirely ceased; while, I say it again, they will not put out their little finger to prevent, nay, they calmly look on, and permit a traffic utterly repugnant to all the best feelings of our nature, and baneful to an incalculable degree to our own West Indian possessions; provided, forsooth, the slaves be stolen within certain limits, which, as no one can prove, naturally leads to this infernal contraband, the suppression of which—Lord, what a thing to think of!—has nearly deprived the world of the invaluable services of me, Aaron Bang, Esquire, Member of Council of the Island of Jamaica, and Custos Rotulorum Populorum Jig of the Parish of——”

“Lord,” said Wagtail, “why, the yam is not half done.”

“But the rum is—ah!” drawled Gelid.

“D——n the yam and the rum too,” rapped out Bang. “Why, you belly-gods, you have interrupted such a torrent of eloquence!”

I began to guess that our friends were waxing peppery. “Why, gentlemen, I don’t know how you feel, but I am regularly done up—it is quite calm, and I hope we shall all sleep, so good-night.”

We nestled in, and the sun had risen before I was called next morning. I hope “I rose a sadder and a wiser man. Upon that morrow’s morn.”

“On deck, there,” said I, while dressing. Mr Peter Swop, one of the Firebrand’s master-mates, and now, in consequence of poor Handlead’s death, acting-master of the Wave, popped in his head through the opening in the flags. “How is the weather, Mr Swop?”

“Calm all night, sir; not a breath stirring, sir.”

“Are the sails shifted?” said I, “and the starboard main-shrouds replaced?”

“They are not yet, sir; the sails are on deck, and the rigging is now stretching, and will be all ready to get over the masthead by breakfast time, sir.”

“How is her head?”

“Why,” rejoined Swop, “it has been boxing all round the compass, sir, for these last twelve hours; at present it is north-east.” “Have we drifted much since last night, Mr Swop?”

“No, sir—much where we were, sir,” rejoined the master. “There are several pieces of wreck, and three dead bodies floating close to, sir.”

By this time I was dressed, and had gone from under the awning on deck. The first thing I did was to glance my eye over the nettings, and there perceived on our quarter, three dead bodies, as Mr Swop had said, floating——one a white Spaniard, and the others the corpses of two unfortunate Africans, who had perished miserably when the brig went down. The white man’s remains, swollen as they were, from the heat of the climate, and sudden putrefaction consequent thereon, floated quietly within pistol-shot, motionless and still; but the bodies of the two negroes were nearly hidden by the clustering sea-birds which had perched on them. There were at least two dozen shipped on each carcass, busy with their beaks and claws, while, on the other hand, the water in the immediate neighbourhood seemed quite alive, from the rushing and walloping of numberless fishes, who were tearing the prey piecemeal. The view was any thing but pleasant, and I naturally turned my eyes forward to see what was going on in the bows of the schooner. I was startled from the number of black faces which I saw.

“Why, Mr Tailtackle, how many of these poor creatures have we on board?”

“There are fifty-nine, sir, under hatches in the fore-hold,” said Timothy, “and thirty-five on deck; but I hope we shan’t have them long, sir. It looks like a breeze to windward. We shall have it before long, sir.”

At this moment Mr Bang came on deck.

“Lord, Tom, I thought it was a flea-bite, last night, but, mercy, I am as stiff and sore as a gentleman need be. How do you feel? I see you have one of your fins in a sling—eh?”

“I am a little stiff, certainly; however, that will go off; but come forward here, my dear sir; come here, and look at this shot-hole—saw you ever anything like that?”

This was the smashing of one of our pumps from a round shot, the splinters from which were stuck into the bottom of the launch, which overhung it, forming really a figure very like the letter A.

“Don’t take it to myself, Tom—no, not at all.”

At this moment the black savages on the forecastle discovered our friend, and shouts of “Sheik Cocoloo” rent the skies. Mr Bang, for a moment, appeared startled, so far as I could judge, he had forgotten that part of his exploit, and did not know what to make of it, until at last the actual meaning seemed to flash on him, when, with a shout of laughter, he bolted in through the opening of the flags to his former quarters below the awning. I descended to the cabin, breakfast having been announced, and sat down to our meal, confronted by Paul Gelid and Pepperpot Wagtail. Presently we heard Aaron sing out, the small skuttle being right overhead, “Pegtop, come here, Pegtop, I say, help me on with my neckcloth—so—that will do; now I shall go on deck. Why, Pearl, my boy, what do you want?” and before Pearl could get a word in, Aaron continued, “I say, Pearl, go to the other end of the ship, and tell your Coromantee friends that it is all a humbug that I am not the Sultan Cocoloo; farther more, that I have not a feather in my tail like a palm branch, of the truth of which I offer to give them ocular proof.”

Pearl made his salaam. “Oh, sir, I fear that we must not say too much on that subject; we have not irons for one half of them savage negirs;” the fellow was as black as a coal himself; “and were they to be undeceived, why, reduced as our crew is, they might at any time rise on, and massacre the whole watch.”

“The devil!” we could hear friend Aaron say; “oh, then, go forward, and assure them that I am a bigger ostrich than ever, and I shall astonish them presently, take my word for it. Pegtop, come here, you scoundrel,” he continued; “I say, Pegtop, get me out my uniform coat,”—our friend was a captain of Jamaica militia—“so—and my sword—that will do—and here, pull off my trowsers it will be more classical to perambulate in my shirt, in case it really be necessary to persuade them that the palm branch was all a figure of speech. Now, my hat—there—walk before me, and fan me with the top of that herring barrel.”

This was a lid of one of the wadding-tubs, which, to come up to Jigmaree’s notions of neatness, had been fitted with covers, and forth stumped Bang, preceded by Pegtop doing the honours. But the instant he appeared from beneath the flags, the same wild shout arose from the captive slaves forward, and such of them as were not fettered, immediately began to bundle and tumble round our friend, rubbing their flat noses and woolly heads all over him, and taking hold of the hem of his garment, whereby his personal decency was so seriously periled, that, after an unavailing attempt to shake them off, he fairly bolted, and ran for shelter, once more, under the awning, amidst the suppressed mirth of the whole crew, Aaron himself laughing louder than any of them all the while. “I say, Tom, and fellow sufferers,” quoth he, after he had run to earth under the awning, and looking down the scuttle into the cabin where we were at breakfast, “how am I to get into the cabin? if I go out on the quarterdeck but one arm’s length, in order to reach the companion, these barbarians will be at me again. Ah, I see.”

Whereupon, without more ado, he stuck his legs down through the small hatch right over the breakfast table, with the intention of descending, and the first thing he accomplished, was to pop his foot into a large dish of scalding hominy, or hasty-pudding, made of Indian corn meal, with which Wagtail was in the habit of commencing his stowage at breakfast. But this proving too hot for comfort, he instantly drew it out, and in his attempt to reascend, he stuck his bespattered toe into Paul Gelid’s mouth. “Oh! oh!” exclaimed Paul, while little Wagtail lay back laughing like to die; but the next instant Bang gave another struggle, or wallop, like a pelloch in shoal-water, whereby Pepperpot borrowed a good kick on the side of the head, and down came the Great Ostrich, Aaron Bang, but without any feather in his tail, as I can avouch, slap upon the table, smashing cups and saucers, and hominy, and devil knows what all, to pieces, as he floundered on the board. This was so absurd, that we were all obliged to give uncontrolled course to our mirth for a minute or two, when, making the best of the wreck, we contrived to breakfast in tolerable comfort.

Soon after the meal was finished, a light air enabled us once more to lie our course, and we gradually crept to the northward, until twelve o’clock in the forenoon, after which time it fell calm again. I went down to the cabin; Bang had been overhauling my small library, when a shelf gave way (the whole affair having been injured by a round shot in the action, which had tom right through the cabin), so down came several scrolls, rolled up, and covered with brown paper.

“What are all these?” I could hear our friend say. “They are my logs,” said I.

“Your what?”

“My private journals.”

“Oh, I see,” said Aaron. “I will have a turn at them, with your permission. But what is this so carefully bound with red tape, and sealed, and marked—let me see, ‘Thomas Cringle, his log-book.’”

He looked at me.—“Why, my dear sir, to say the truth, that is my first attempt; full of trash, believe me;—what else could you expect, from so mere a lad as I was when I wrote it?”

“The child is father to the man, Tom, my boy; so may I peruse it; may I read it for the edification of my learned allies,—Pepperpot Wagtail, and Paul Gelid, esquires?”

“Certainly,” I replied, “no objection in the world, but you will laugh at me, I know; still, do as you please, only, had you not better have your wound dressed first?”

“My wound! Poo, poo! just enough to swear by—a flea-bite never mind it; so here goes”—and he read aloud what is detailed in the “Launching of the Log,” making his remarks with so much naivete, that I daresay the reader will be glad to hear a few of them. His anxiety, for instance, when he read of the young aide-de-camp being shot and dragged by the stirrup, to know “what became of the empty horse,” was very entertaining; and when he had read the description of Davoust’s face and person, where I describe his nose, as neither fine nor dumpy—a fair enough proboscis as noses go, he laid down the Log with the most laughable seriousness.

“Now,” quoth he, “very inexplicit all this, Tom. Why, I am most curious in noses. I judge of character altogether from the nose. I never lose sight of a man’s snout, albeit I never saw the tip of my own. You may rely on it, that it is all a mistake to consider the regular Roman nose, with a curve like a shoemaker’s paring knife, or the straight Grecian, with a thin transparent ridge, that you can see through, or the Deutsch meerschaum, or the Saxon pump-handle, or the Scotch mull, or any other nose, that can be taken hold of, as the standard gnomon. No, no; I never saw a man with a large nose who was not a blockhead—eh! Gelid, my love? The pimple for me—the regular pimple but allons.”—And where, having introduced the German refugees to Captain Deadeye, I go on to say that I thereupon dived into the midshipmen’s berth for a morsel of comfort, and was soon “far into the secrets of a pork pie,”—he lay back, and exclaimed with a long drawling emphasis—“A pork pie!”

“A pork pie!” said Paul Gelid.

“Why, do you know,” said Mr Wagtail—“I—why, I never in all my life saw a pork pie.”

“My dear Pepperpot,” chimed in Gelid, “we both forget. Don’t you remember the day we dined with the Admiral at the pen, in July last?”

“No,” said Wagtail, “I totally forget it.” Bang, I saw was all this while chuckling to himself—“I absolutely forget it altogether.”

“Bless me,” said Gelid, “don’t you remember the beautiful calipeever we had that day?”

“Really I do not,” said Pepperpot, “I have had so many good feeds there.”

“Why,” continued Gelid, “Lord love you, Wagtail, not remember that calipeever, so crisp in the broiling?”

“No,” said Wagtail, “really I do not.”

“Lord, man, it had a pudding in its belly.”

“Oh, now I remember,” said Wagtail.

Bang laughed outright, and I could not help making a hole in my manners also, even prepared as I was for my jest by my sable crony Pegtop.—To proceed.

Aaron looked at me with one of his quizzical grins; “Cringle, my darling, do you keep these Logs still?”

“I do, my dear sir, invariably.”

“What,” struck in little Wagtail, “the deuce!—for instance shall I, and Paul, and Aaron there, all be embalmed or preserved” (“Say pickled,” quoth the latter) “in these said Logs of yours?” This was too absurd, and I could not answer my allies for laughing. As for Gelid, he had been swaying himself backwards and forwards, half asleep, on the hind legs of his chair all this while, puffing away at a cigar.

“Ah!” said he half asleep, and but partly overhearing what was going on; “ah, Tom, my dear, you don’t say that we shall all be handed down to our poster”—a long yawn—“to our poster” another yawn—when Bang, watching his opportunity as he sat opposite, gently touched one of the fore-legs of the balanced chair with his toe, while he finished Gelid’s sentence by interjecting, “iors,” as the conch fell back and floundered over on his stem; his tormentor drawling out in wicked mimicry.

“Yes, dear Gelid, so sure as you have been landed down on your posteriors now—ah—you shall be handed down to your posterity hereafter, by that pestilent little scamp Cringle. Ah, Tom, I know you. Paul, Paul, it will be paulo postfuturum with you, my lad.”

Here we were interrupted by my steward’s entering with his tallow face. “Dinner on the table, sir.” We adjourned accordingly.

After dinner we carried on very much as usual, although the events of the previous day had their natural effect; there was little mirth, and no loud laughter. Once more we all turned in, the calm still continuing, and next morning after breakfast, friend Aaron took to the Log again.

But the most amusing exhibition took place when he came to the description of the row in the dark stair at the agent’s house, where the negroes fight for the scraps, and capsize Treenail, myself, and the brown lady, down the steps.

“Why, I say, Tom,” again quoth Aaron, “I never knew before, that you were in Jamaica at the period you here write of.”

“Why, my dear sir, I scarcely can say that I was there, my visit was so hurried.”

“Hurried!” rejoined he, “hurried—by no means; were you not in the island for four or five hours? Ah, long enough to have authorized your writing an anti-slavery pamphlet of one hundred and fifty pages.”

I smiled.

“Oh, you may laugh, my boy, but it is true—what a subject for an anti— slavery lecture—listen and be instructed.” Here our friend shook himself as a bruiser does to ascertain that all is right before he throws up his guard, and for the first five minutes he only jerked his right shoulder this way and his left shoulder t’other way, while his fins walloped down against his sides like empty sleeves; at length, as he warmed, he stretched forth his arms like Saint Paul in the Cartoon and although he now and then could not help sticking his tongue in his cheek, still the exhibition was so true and so exquisitely comical, that I never shall forget it.—“The whole white inhabitants of Kingston are luxurious monsters, living in more than Eastern splendour; and their universal practice, during their magnificent repasts, is to entertain themselves, by compelling their black servants to belabour each other across the pate with silver ladles, and to stick drumsticks of turkeys down each other’s throats. Merciful heaven! only picture the miserable slaves, each with the spaul of a turkey sticking in his gob; dwell upon that, my dearly beloved hearers, dwell upon that—and then let those who have the atrocious hardihood to do so, speak of the kindliness of the planters hearts. Kindliness! kindliness, to cram the leg of a turkey down a man’s throat, while his yoke-fellow in bondage is fracturing his tender woolly skull—for all negroes, as is well known, have craniums, much thinner, and more fragile than an egg-shell—with so tremendous a weapon as a silver ladle? Ay, a silver ladle!!! Some people make light of a silver ladle as an instrument of punishment—it is spoken of as a very slight affair, and that the blows inflicted by it are mere child’s play. If any of you, my beloved hearers, labour under this delusion, and will allow me, for your edification, to hammer you about the chops with one of the aforesaid silver soup-ladles of those yellow tyrants, for one little half hour, I pledge myself the delusion shall be dispelled once and for ever. Well then, after this fearful scene has continued for, I dare not say how long—the black butler—ay, the black butler, a slave himself—oh, my friends, even the black butlers are slaves the very men who minister the wine in health which maketh their hearts glad, and the castor oil in sickness, which maketh them any thing but of a cheerful countenance—this very black butler is desired, on peril of having a drumstick stuck into his own gizzard also, and his skull fractured by the aforesaid iron ladles—red hot, it may be—ay, and who shall say they are not full of molten lead? yes, molten lead— does not our reverend brother Lachrimac Roarem say that the ladles might have been full of molten lead, and what evidence have we on the other side, that they were not full of molten lead? Why, none at all, none— nothing but the oaths of all the naval and military officers who have ever served in these pestilent settlements; and of all the planters and merchants in the West Indies, the interested planters—those planters who suborn all the navy and army to a man—those planters whose molasses is but another name for human blood. (Here a large puff and blow, and a swabification of the white handkerchief, while the congregation blow a flourish of trumpets.) My friends—(another puff)—my friends—we all know, my friends, that bullocks blood is largely used in the sugar refineries in England, but, alas! there is no bullocks blood used in the refineries in the West Indies. This I will prove to you on the oath of six dissenting clergymen. No. What then is the inference? Oh, is it not palpable? Do you not every day, as jurors, hang men on circumstantial evidence? Are not many of yourselves hanged and transported every year, on the simple fact being proved, of your being found stooping down in pity over some poor fellow with a broken head, with your hands in his breeches pockets in order to help him up? And can you fail to draw the proper inference in the present case? Oh, no! no! my friends, it is the blood of the negroes that is used in these refining pandemoniums of the poor negroes, who are worth one hundred pounds apiece to their masters, and on whose health and capacity for work these same planters absolutely and entirely depend.”

Here our friend gathered all his energies, and began to roar like a perfect bull of Bashan, and to swing his arms about like the sails of a windmill, and to stamp and jump, and lollop about with his body as he went on.

“Well, this butler, this poor black butler—this poor black slave butler this poor black Christian slave butler—for he may have been a Christian, and most likely was a Christian, and indeed must have been a Christian—is enforced, after all the cruelties already related, on pain of being choked with the leg of a turkey himself, and having molten lead poured down his own throat, to do what?—who would not weep?—to—to—to chuck each of his fellow-servants, poor miserable creatures! each with a bone in his throat, and molten lead in his belly, and a fractured skull—to chuck them, neck and croup, one after another, down a dark staircase, a pitch-dark staircase, amidst a chaos of plates and dishes, and the hardest and most expensive china, and the finest cut crystal— that the wounds inflicted may be the keener and silver spoons, and knives and forks. Yea, my Christian brethren, carving knives and pitchforks right down on the top of their brown mistresses, who are thereby invariably bruised like the clown in the pantomime—at least as I am told he is, for I never go to such profane Places—oh, no!—bruised as flat as pancakes, and generally murdered outright on the spot. Last of all the landlord gets up, and kicks the miserable butler himself down after his mates, into the very heart of the living mass; and this not once and away, but every day in the week, Sundays not excepted. Oh, my dear, dear hearers, can you can you, with your fleshy hearts thumping and bumping against your small ribs, forget the black butler, and the mulatto concubines, and the pitchforks, and the iron ladles full of molten lead? My feelings overpower me, I must conclude. Go in peace, and ponder these things in your hearts, and pay your sixpences at the doors.—Exeunt omnes, piping their eyes, and blowing their noses.”

Our shouts of laughter interrupted our friend, who never moved a muscle.

Again, where old Crowfoot asks his steward—“How does the privateer lay?”

“There again now,” said Aaron, with an irritable grin,—“why, Tom, your style is most pestilent—you lay here and you lay there—are you sure that you are not a hen, Tom?”

One more touch at Massa Aaron, and I have done. After coming to the description of the horrible carnage that the fire from the Transport caused on the privateer’s deck before she sheered off, I remarked “I never recall that early and dismal scene to my recollection,—the awful havoc created on the schooner’s deck by our fire, the struggling, and crawling, and wriggling of the dark mass of wounded men, as they endeavoured, fruitlessly, to shelter themselves from our guns, even behind the dead bodies of their slain shipmates—without conjuring up a very fearful and harrowing image.”

“Were you ever at Biggleswade, my dear sir?”

“To be sure I have,” said Mr Bang.

“Then did you ever see an eel-pot, with the water drawn off, when the snake-like fish were twining, and twisting, and crawling, like Brobdignag maggots, in living knots, a horrible and disgusting mass of living abomination, amidst the filthy slime at the bottom?”

“Ach—have done, Tom—hang your similes. Can’t you cut your coat by me, man? Only observe the delicacy of mine.”

“The corby craw for instance,” said I, laughing.

“Ever at Biggleswade!” struck in Paul Gelid. “Ever at Biggleswade! Lord love you, Cringle, we have all been at Biggleswade. Don’t you know,” (how he conceived I should have known, I am sure I never could tell,) “don’t you know that Wagtail and I once made a voyage to England, ay, in the hurricane months, too—ah—for the express purpose of eating eels there,—and Lord, Tom, my dear fellow,” (here he sunk his voice into a most dolorous key,) “let me tell you that we were caught in a hurricane, in the Gulf, and very nearly lost, when, instead of eating eels, sharks would have eaten usah—and at length driven into Havannah— ah. And when we did get home”—(here I thought my excellent friend would have cried outright)—“Lord, sir! we found that the fall was not the season to eat eels in after all—ah—that is, in perfection. But we found out from Whiffle, whom we met in town, and who had learned it from the guard of the North mail, that one of the last season’s pots was still on hand at Biggleswade; so down we trundled in the mail that very evening.”

“And don’t you remember the awful cold I caught that night, being obliged to go outside?” quoth Waggy.

“Ah, and so you did, my dear fellow,” continued his ally.

“But gracious—on alighting, we found that the agent of a confounded gormandizing Lord Mayor had that very evening boned the entire contents of the only remaining pot, for a cursed livery dinnerah. Eels, indeed! we got none but those of the new catch, full of mud, and tasting of mud and red worms. Wagtail was really very ill in consequence—ah.”

Pepperpot had all this while listened with mute attention, as if the narrative had been most moving, and I question not he thought so; but Bang—oh, the rogue!—looked also very grave and sympathizing, but there was a laughing devil in his eye, that showed he was inwardly enjoying the beautiful rise of his friends.

We were here interrupted by a hail from the look-out man at the masthead,——‘Land right a-head.’

“What does it look like?” said I.

“It makes in low hummocks, sir. Now I see houses on the highest one.”

“Hurrah, Nassau, New Providence, ho!”

Shortly after we made the land about Nassau, the breeze died away, and it fell nearly calm.

“I say, Thomas,” quoth Aaron, “for this night at least we must still be your guests, and lumber you on board of your seventy-four. No chance, so far as I see, of getting into port to-night; at least if we do, it will be too late to go on shore.”

He said truly, and we therefore made up our mind to sit down once more to our rough and round dinner, in the small, hot, choky cabin of the Wave. As it happened, we were all in high glee. I flattered myself that my conduct in the late affair would hoist me up a step or two on the roster for promotion, and my excellent friends were delighted at the idea of getting on shore.

After the cloth had been drawn, Mr Bang opened his fire.

“Tom, my boy, I respect your service, but I have no great ambition to belong to it. I am sure no bribe that I am aware of could ever tempt me to make ‘my home upon the deep,’ and I really am not sure that it is a very gentlemanly calling after all.—Nay, don’t look glum; what I meant was, the egregious weariness of spirit you must all undergo from consorting with the same men day after day, hearing the same jokes repeated for the hundredth time, and, whichever way you turn, seeing the same faces morning, noon, and night, and listening to the same voices. Oh! I should die in a year’s time were I to become a sailor.”

“But,” rejoined I, “you have your land bores in the same way that we have our sea bores; and we have this advantage over you, that if the devil should stand at the door, we can always escape from them sooner or later, and can buoy up our souls with the certainty that we can so escape from them at the end of the cruise at the farthest; whereas if you happen to have taken root amidst a colony of bores on shore, why you never can escape, unless you sacrifice all your temporalities for that purpose; ergo, my dear sir, our life has its advantages, and yours has it disadvantages.”

“Too true—too true,” rejoined Mr Bang. “In fact, judging from my own small experience, Borism is fast attaining a head it never reached before. Speechifying is the crying and prominent vice of the age. Why will the ganders not recollect that eloquence is the gift of heaven, Thomas? A man may improve it unquestionably, but the Promethean fire, the electrical spark, must be from on high. No mental perseverance or education could ever have made a Demosthenes, or a Cicero, in the ages long past; nor an Edmund Burke.”

“Nor an Aaron Bang in times present,” said I.

“Hide my roseate blushes, Thomas,” quoth Aaron, as he continued—“Would that men would speak according to their gifts, study Shakspeare and Don Quixote, and learn of me; and that the real blockhead would content himself with speaking when he is spoken to, drinking when he is drunken to, and ganging to the kirk when the bell rings. You never can go into a party nowadays, that you don’t meet with some shallow, prosing, pestilent ass of a fellow, who thinks that empty sound is conversation; and not unfrequently there is a spice of malignity in the blockhead’s composition; but a creature of this calibre you can wither, for it is not worth crushing, by withholding the sunshine of your countenance from it, or by leaving it to drivel on, until the utter contempt of the whole company claps to change the figure—a wet night—cap as an extinguisher on it, and its small stinking flame flickers and goes out of itself. Then there is your sentimental water-fly, who blaws in the lugs of the women, and clips the King’s English, and your high-flying dominie body, who whumles them outright. I speak in a figure. But all these are as dust in the balance to the wearisome man of ponderous acquirements, the solemn blockhead who usurps the pas, and if he happen to be rich, fancies himself entitled to prose and palaver away, as if he were Sir Oracle, or as if the pence in his purse could ever fructify the cauld parritch in his pate into pregnant brain. There is a plateful of P’s for you at any rate, Tom. Beautiful exemplification of the art alliterative—an’t it?”

My dear boy, speechifying has extinguished conversation. Public meetings, God knows, are rife enough, and why will the numskulls not confine their infernal dullness to them? why not be satisfied with splitting the ears of the groundlings there? why will they not consider that convivial conversation should be lively as the sparkle of musketry, brilliant, sharp, and sprightly, and not like the thundering of heavy cannon, or heavier bombs.—But no—you shall ask one of the Drawleys across the table to take wine. ‘Ah,’ says he—and how he makes out the concatenation, God only knows—‘this puts me in mind, Mr Thingumbob, of what happened when I was chairman of the county club, on such a day. Alarming times these were, and deucedly nervous I was when I got up to return thanks. My friends, said I, this unexpected and most unlooked— for honour—this’—Here blowing all your breeding to the winds, you fire a question across his bows into the fat pleasant fellow, who speaks for society beyond him, and expect to find that the dull sailor has hauled his wind, or dropped astern—(do you twig how nautical I have become in my lingo under Tailtackle’s tuition, Tom?)—but, alas! no sooner has the sparkle of our fat friend’s wit lit up the whole worshipful society, than at the first lull, down comes Drawley again upon you, like a heavy-sterned Dutch dogger, right before the wind—‘As I was saying—this unexpected and most unlooked-for honour’—and there you are pinned to the stake, and compelled to stand the fire of all his blunt bird-boltst for half an hour on end. At length his mud has all dribbled from him, and you hug yourself—‘Ah,—come, here is a talking man opening his fire, so we shall have some conversation at last.’ But alas and alack a day! Prosey the second chimes in, and works away, and hems and haws, and hawks up some old scraps of schoolboy Latin and Greek, which are all Hebrew to you, honest man, until at length he finishes off by some solemn twaddle about fossil turnips and vitrified brickbats; and thus concludes Fozy No. 2. Oh, shade of Edie Ochiltree! that we should stand in the taunt of such unmerciful spendthrifts of our time on earth! Besides, the devil of it is, that whatever may be said of the flippant palaverers, the heavy bores are generally most excellent and amiable men, so that one can’t abuse the sumphs with any thing like a quiet conscience.”

“Come,” said I, “my dear sir, you are growing satirical.”

“Quarter less three,” sung 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 over-worked, 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 over head; 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 matrass spread on the locker below me, gave a spluttering cough. A heavy splash followed, and, simultaneously, several of the men forward shouted out “Ship MI 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 but, 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 trowsers 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 arm-pits, 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 brimfull water-stoups. “Zounds! look at my boots.”

“And confound both the wig and boots, say I,” sung out Mr Bang. “Look at my Sunday coat. Why, who set the ship onfire, 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, the wounded and the sound part of the crew had been placed on board of two merchant brigs, that lay close to us; and 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 be obliged; but don’t let me intrude. Give my compliments, and say I have looked in simply to enquire 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 Kilmamock—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 surprises 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 warm hearted 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 studdingsail-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 fullness 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 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 Bang 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 pump-bolt 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 there 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 beef-steaks and a thimbleful of Burton ale; and again I tried the dried knuckle parts of legs of five-year-old black faced muttons; but, latterly, I trained best, so far as wind was concerned, on birsled pease and whisky....”

“On what?” shouted I, in great astonishment. “On what?”

“Yes, my boys; parched pease and whisky. Charge properly with birsled pease, and if you take a caulkers just as you begin your run, there is the linstock to the gun for you, and away you fly through the air on the self-propelling 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 pease 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 spunyam, 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 foreleg, 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 kickeriboo 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 drank our health’s.

Here Sneezer, who had been still as a mouse all this while, put his black snout out of the 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 cashew 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.

“We shall see, we shall see,” said I.

“I say, Don Timotheus,” quoth Bang, “you don’t mean to be off without drinking our healths?” as he tipped him a tumbler of brandy grog of very dangerous strength.

The warrant officer drank it, and vanished, and presently Mr Gelid’s brother, who had just returned from one of the out islands, made his appearance, and after the greeting between them was over, the stranger advanced, and with much grace invited us en masse to his house. But by this time Mr Wagtail was so ill, that we could not move that night, our chief concern now being to see him properly bestowed; and very soon I was convinced that his disease was a violent bilious fever.

The old brown landlady, like all her caste, was a most excellent nurse; and after the most approved and skilful surgeon of the town had seen him, and prescribed what was thought right, we all turned in. Next morning, before any of us were up, a whole plateful of cards were handed to us, and during the forenoon these were followed by as many invitations to dinner. We had difficulty in making our election, but that day I remember we dined at the beautiful Mrs C——‘s, and in the evening adjourned to a ball—a very gay affair; and I do freely avow, that I never saw so many pretty women in a community of the same size before. Oh! it was a little paradise, and not without its Eve. But such an Eve! I scarcely think the old Serpent himself could have found it in his heart to have beguiled her.

“I say, Tom, my dear boy,” said Mr Bang, “do you see that darling? Oh, who can picture to himself, without a tear, that such a creature of light, such an ethereal-looking thing, whose step ‘would ne’er wear out the everlasting flint,’ that floating gossamer on the thin air, shall one day become an anxious-looking, sharp-featured, pale-faced, loud tongued, thin-bosomed, broad bottomed wife!”

The next day, or rather in the same night, his Majesty’s ship Rabo arrived, and the first tidings we had of it in the morning were communicated by Captain Qeuedechat himself, an honest, uproarious sailor, who chose to begin, as many a worthy ends, by driving up to the door of the lodging in a cart.

“Is the Captain of the small schooner that was swamped, here?” he asked of Massa Pegtop.

Free and easy this, thought I.

“Yes, sir, Captain Cringle is here, but him no get up yet.” “Oh, never mind, tell him not to hurry himself; but where is the table laid for breakfast?”

“Here, sir,” said Pegtop, as he showed him into the piazza.

“Ah, that will do—so give me the newspaper—tol de rol,” and he began reading and singing, in all the buoyancy of mind consequent on escaping from shipboard after a three months cruise.

I dressed and came to him as soon as I could; and the gallant Captain, whom I had figured to myself a fine light gossamer lad of twenty-two, stared me in the face as a fat elderly cock of forty at the least; and as to bulk, I would not have guaranteed that eighteen stone could have made him kick the beam. However, he was an excellent fellow, and that day he and his crew were of most essential service in assisting me in refitting the Wave, for which I shall always be grateful. I had spent the greater part of the forenoon in my professional duty, but after two o’clock I had knocked off, in order to make a few calls on the families to whom I had introductions, and who were afterwards so signally kind to me. I then returned to our lodgings in order to dress for dinner, before I sallied forth to worthy old Mr N——‘s, where we were all to dine, when I met Aaron.

“No chance of our removing to Peter Gelid’s this evening.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Oh, poor Pepperpot Wagtail is become alarmingly ill; inflammatory symptoms have appeared, and”—Here the colloquy was cut short by the entrance of Mrs Peter Celid—a pretty woman enough. She had come to learn herself from our landlady, how Mr Wagtail was, and with the kindliness of the country, she volunteered to visit poor little Waggy in his sick-bed. I did not go into the room with her; but when she returned, she startled us all a good deal, by stating her opinion that the worthy man was really very ill, in which she was corroborated by the doctor, who now arrived. So soon as the medico saw him, he bled him, and after prescribing a lot of effervescing draughts, and various febrifuge mixtures, he left a large blister with the old brown landlady, to be applied over his stomach if the wavering and flightiness did not leave him before morning. We returned early after dinner from Mr N——‘s to our lodgings, and as I knew Gelid was expected at his brother’s in the evening, to meet a large assemblage of kindred, and as the night was rainy and tempestuous, I persuaded him to trust the watch to me; and as our brown landlady had been up nearly the whole of the previous night, I sent for Tailtackle to spell me, while the black valets acted with great assiduity in their capacity of surgeon’s mates. About two in the morning Mr Wagtail became delirious, and it was all that I could do, aided by my sable assistants, and an old black nurse, to hold him down in his bed. Now was the time to clap on the blister, but he repeatedly tore it off, so that at length we had to give it up for an impracticable job; and Tailtackle, whom I had called from his pallet, where he had gone to lie down for an hour, placed the caustico, as the Spaniards call it, at the side of the bed.

“No use in trying this any more at present,” said I; “we must wait until he gets quieter, Mr Tailtackle; so go to your bed, and I shall lie down on this sofa here, where Marie Paparoche” (this was our old landlady) “has spread sheets, I see, and made all comfortable. And send Mr Bang’s servant, will you;” (friend Aaron had ridden into the country after dinner to visit a friend, and the storm, as I conjectured, had kept him there;) “he is fresh, and will call me in case I be wanted, or Mr Wagtail gets worse.”

I lay down, and soon fell fast asleep, and I remembered nothing, until I awoke about eleven o’clock next morning, and heard Mr Bang speaking to Wagtail, at whose bedside he was standing.

“Pepperpot, my dear, be thankful—you are quite cool—a fine moisture on your skin this morning—be thankful, my little man how did your blister rise?”

“My good friend,” quoth Wagtail, in a thin weak voice, “I can’t tell—I don’t know; but this I perceive, that I am unable to rise, whether it has risen or no.”

“Ah—weak,” quoth Gelid, who had now entered the room.

“Nay,” said Pepperpot, “not so weak as deucedly sore, and on a very unromantic spot, my dears.”

“Why,” said Aaron, “the pit of the stomach is not a very genteel department, nor the abdomen neither.”

“Why,” said Wagtail, “I have no blister on either of those places, but if it were possible to dream of such a thing, I would say it had been clapped on....”

Here his innate propriety tongue-tied him.

“Eh?” said Aaron; “what—has the caustico that was intended for the frontiers of Belgium been clapped by mistake on the broad Pays Bas?”

And so in very truth it turned out; for while we slept, the patient had risen, and sat down on the blister that lay, as already mentioned, on a chair at his bedside, and again toppling into bed, had fallen into a sound sleep, from which he had but a few moments before the time I write of awoke.

“Why, now,” continued Aaron, to the doctor of the Wave who had just entered—“why, here is a discovery, my dear doctor. You clap a hot blister on a poor fellow’s head to cool it, but Doctor Cringle there has cooled Master Wagtail’s brain, by blistering his stern—eh?—Make notes, and mind you report this to the College of Surgeons.”

I cleared myself of these imputations. Wagtail recovered; our refitting was completed; our wood, and water, and provisions, replenished; and, after spending one of the happiest fortnights of my life, in one continued round of gaiety, I prepared to leave—with tears in my eyes, I will confess—the clear waters, bright blue skies, glorious climate, and warm hearted community of Nassau, New Providence. Well might that old villain Blackbeard have made this sweet spot his favourite rendezvous. By the way, this same John Teach or Blackbeard, had fourteen wives in the lovely island; and I am not sure but I could have picked out something approximating to the aforesaid number myself, with time and opportunity, from among such a galaxy of loveliness as then shone and sparkled in this dear little town. Speaking of the pirate Blackbeard, I ought to have related that one morning when I was at breakfast at Mrs C——‘s, the amiable, and beautiful, and innocent girl matron ay, you supercilious son of a sea-cook, you may turn up your nose at the expression, but if you could have seen the burden of my song as I saw her, and felt the elegancies of her manner and conversation as I felt them—but let us stick to Blackbeard, if you please. We were all comfortably seated at breakfast; I had finished my sixth egg, had concealed a beautiful dried snapper, before which even a rizzard haddock sank into insignificance, and was bethinking me of finishing off with a slice of Scotch mutton-ham, when in slid Mr Bang. He was received with all possible cordiality, and commenced operations very vigorously.

He was an amazing favourite of our hostess, (as where was he not a favourite?) so that it was some time before he even looked my way. We were in the midst of a discussion regarding the beauty of New Providence, and the West India Islands in general; and I was remarking that nature had been liberal, that the scenery was unquestionably magnificent in the larger islands, and beautiful in the smaller; but there were none of those heart-stirring reminiscences, none of those thrilling electrical associations, which vibrate to the heart at visiting scenes in Europe famous in antiquity—famous as the spot in which recent victories had been achieved—famous even for the very freebooters, who once held unlawful sway in the neighbourhood. “Why, there never has flourished hereabouts, for instance, even one thoroughly melodramatic thief.” Massa Aaron let me go on, until he had nearly finished his breakfast. At length he fired a shot at me.

“I say, Tom, you are expatiating, I see. Nothing heart stirring, say you? In new countries it would bother you to have old associations certainly; and you have had your Rob Roy, I grant you, and the old country has had her Robin Hood. But has not Jamaica had her Three fingered Jack? Ay, a more gentlemanlike scoundrel than either of the former. When did jack refuse a piece of yam, and a cordial from his horn, to the wayworn man, white or black? When did he injure a woman? When did Jack refuse food and a draught of cold water, the greatest boon, in our ardent climate, that he could offer, to a wearied child? Oh, there was much poetry in the poor fellow! And here, had they not that most melodramatic (as you choose to word it) of thieves, Blackbeard, before whom Bluebeard must for ever hide his diminished head? Why, Bluebeard had only one wife at a time, although he murdered five of them, whereas Blackbeard had seldom fewer than a dozen, and he was never known to murder above three. But I have fallen in with such a treasure! Oh, such a discovery! I have been communing with Noah himself with an old negro, who remembers this very Blackbeard—the pirate Blackbeard.”

“The deuce,” said I; “impossible!” “But it is true. Why it is only ninety-four years ago since the scoundrel flourished, and this old cock is one hundred and ten. I have jotted it down—worth a hundred pounds. Read, my adorable Mrs C——, read.”

“But, my dear Mr Bang,” said she, “had you not better read it yourself?”

“You, if you please,” quoth Aaron, who forthwith set himself to make the best use of his time.

John Teach, or Blackbeard, was a very eminent man—a very handsome man, and a very devil amongst the ladies.

He was a Welshman, and introduced the leek into Nassau about the year 1718, and was a very remarkable personage, although, from some singular imperfection in his moral constitution, he never could distinguish clearly between meum and tuum.

He found his patrimony was not sufficient to support him; and as he disliked agricultural pursuits as much as mercantile, he got together forty or fifty fine young men one day, and borrowed a vessel from some merchants that was lying at the Nore, and set sail for the Bahamas. On his way he fell in with several West Indiamen, and, sending a boat on board of each, he asked them for the loan of provisions and wine, and all their gold, and silver, and clothes, which request was in every instance but one civilly acceded to; whereupon, drinking their good healths, he returned to his ship. In the instance where he had been uncivilly treated, to show his forbearance, he saluted them with twenty one guns; but by some accident the shot had not been withdrawn, so that unfortunately the contumacious ill bred craft sank, and as Blackbeard’s own vessel was very crowded, he was unable to save any of the crew. He was a great admirer of fine air, and accordingly established himself on the island of New Providence, and invited a number of elegant young men, who were fond of pleasure cruises, to visit him, so that presently he found it necessary to launch forth in order to borrow more provisions.

At this period he was a great dandy; and amongst other vagaries, he allowed his beard to grow a foot long at the shortest, and then plaited it into three strands, indicating that he was a bashaw of no common dimensions. He wore red breeches, but no stockings, and sandals of bullock’s hide. He was a perfect Egyptian in his curiousness in fine linen, and his shirt was always white as the driven snow when it was clean, which was the first Sunday of every month. In waistcoats he was especially select; but the cut of them very much depended on the fashion in favour with the last gentleman he had borrowed from. He never wore any thing but a full dress purple velvet coat, under which bristled three brace of pistols, and two naked stilettoes, only eighteen inches long, and he had generally a lighted match fizzing in the bow of his cocked scraper whereat he lighted his pipe, or fired off a cannon, as pleased him.

One of his favourite amusements, when he got half slewed, was to adjourn to the hold with his compotators, and kindling some brimstone matches, to dance and roar, as if he had been the devil himself, until his allies were nearly suffocated. At another time he would blow out the candles in the cabin, and blaze away with his loaded pistols at random, right and left, whereby he severely wounded the feelings of some of his intimates by the poignancy of his wit, all of which he considered a most excellent joke. But he was kind to his fourteen wives so long as he was sober, as it is known that he never murdered above three of them. His borrowing, however, gave offence to our government, no one can tell how; and at length two of our frigates, the Lime and Pearl, then cruising off the American coast, after driving him from his, stronghold, hunted him down in an inlet in North Carolina, where, in an eight-gun schooner, with thirty desperate fellows, he made a defence worthy of his honourable life, and fought so furiously that he killed and wounded more men of the attacking party than his own crew consisted of; and following up his success, he boarded, sword in hand, the headmost of the two armed sloops, which had been detached by the frigates, with ninety men on board, to capture him; and being followed by twelve men and his trusty lieutenant, he would have carried her out and out, maugre the disparity of force, had he not fainted from loss of blood, when, falling on his back, he died where he fell, like a hero—“His face to the sky, and his feet to the foe” leaving eleven forlorn widows, being the fourteen wives, minus the three that he had throttled.

“NO CHIVALROUS ASSOCIATIONS indeed! Match me such a character as this.”

We all applauded to the echo. But I must end my song, for I should never tire in dwelling on the happy days we spent in this most enchanting little island. The lovely blithe girls, and the hospitable kind hearted men, and the children! I never saw such cherubs, with all the sprightliness of the little pale-faced creoles of the West Indies, while the healthy bloom of Old England blossomed on their cheeks.

“I say, Tom,” said Massa Aaron, on one occasion when I was rather tedious on the subject, “all those little cherubs, as you call them, at least the most of them, are the offspring of the cotton bales captured in the American war.”

“The what?” said I.

“The children of the American war—and I will prove it thus taking the time from no less an authority than Hamlet, when he chose to follow the great Dictator, Julius Caesar himself, through all the corruption of our physical nature, until he found him stopping a beer barrel—(only imagine the froth of one of our disinterested friend Buxton’s beer barrels, savouring of quassia, not hop, fizzing through the clay of Julius Caesar the Roman!)—as thus: If there had been no Yankee war, there would have been no prize cargoes of cotton sent into Nassau; if there had been no prize cargoes sent into Nassau, there would have been little money made; if there had been little money made, there would have been fewer marriages; if there had been fewer marriages, there would have been fewer cherubs. There is logic for you, my darling.”

“Your last is a non sequitur, my dear sir,” said I, laughing. “But, in the main, Parson Malthus is right, out of Ireland that is, after all.”

That evening I got into a small scrape, by impressing three apprentices out of a Scotch brig, and if Mr Bang had not stood my friend, I might have, got into serious trouble. Thanks to him, the affair was soldered.

When on the eve of sailing, my excellent friends, Messrs Bang, Gelid, and Wagtail, determined, in consequence of letters which they had received from Jamaica, to return home in a beautiful armed brig that was to sail in a few days, laden with flour. I cannot well describe how much this moved me. Young and enthusiastic as I was, I had grappled myself with hooks of steel to Mr Bang; and now, when he unexpectedly communicated his intention of leaving me, I felt more forlorn and deserted than I was willing to plead to.

“My dear boy,” said he, “make my peace with Transom. If urgent business had not pressed me, I would not have broken my promise to rejoin him; but I am imperiously called for in Jamaica, where I hope soon to see you.” He continued, with a slight tremor in his voice, which thrilled to my heart, as it vouched for the strength of his regard,—“If ever I am where you may come, Tom, and you don’t make my house your home, provided you have not a better of your own, I will never forgive you.” He paused. “You young fellows sometimes spend faster than you should do, and quarterly bills are long of coming round. I have drawn for more money than I want. I wish you would—let me be your banker for a hundred pounds, Tom.”

I squeezed his hand. “No, no—many, many thanks, my dear sir but I never outrun the constable. Goodbye, God bless you. Farewell, Mr Wagtail—Mr Gelid, adieu.” I tumbled into the boat and pulled on board. The first thing I did was to send the wine and sea stock, a most exuberant assortment unquestionably, belonging to my Jamaica friends, ashore; but, to my surprise, the boat was sent back, with Mr Bang’s card, on which was written in pencil, “Don’t affront us, Captain Cringle.” Thereupon I got the schooner under weigh, and no event worth narrating turned up until we anchored close to the post office at Crooked Island, two days after.

We found the Firebrand there, and the post-office mail-boat, with her red flag and white horse in it, and I went on board the corvette to deliver my official letter, detailing the incidents of the cruise, and was most graciously received by my captain.

There was a sail in sight when we anchored, which at first we took for the Jamaica packet; but it turned out to be the Tinker, friend Bang’s flour-loaded brig; and by five in the evening our friends were all three once more restored to us, but, alas! so far as regarded two of them, only for a moment. Messrs Gelid and Wagtail had, on second thoughts, it seems, hauled their wind to lay in a stock of turtle at Crooked Island, and I went ashore with them, and assisted in the selection from the turtle crawls filled with beautiful clear water, and lots of fine lively fresh-caught fish, the postmaster being the turtle merchant.

“I say, Paul, happier in the fish way here than you were at Biggleswade eh?” said Aaron.

After we had completed our purchases, our friends went on board the corvette, and I was invited to meet them at dinner, where the aforesaid postmaster, a stout conch, with a square-cut coatee and red cape and cuffs, was also a guest.

He must have had but a dull time of it, as there were no other white inhabitants that I saw, on the island besides himself; his wife having gone to Nassau, which he looked on as the prime city of the world, to be confined, as he told us. Bang said, that she must rather have gone to be delivered from confinement; and, in truth, Crooked Island was a most desolate domicile for a lady; our friend the postmaster’s family, and a few negroes employed in catching turtle, and making salt, and dressing some scrubby cotton-trees, composing the whole population. In the evening the packet did arrive, however, and Captain Transom received his orders.

“Captain Transom, my boy,” quoth Bang towards nightfall, “the best of friends must part—we must move—good—night—we shall be off presently good—by”—and he held out his hand.

“Devil a bit,” said Transom; “Bang, you shall not go, neither you nor your friends. You promised, in fact shipped with me for the cruise, and Lady——has my word and honour that you shall be restored to her longing eye, sound and safe—so you must all remain, and send down the flour brig to say you are coming.”

To make a long story short, Massa Aaron was boned, but his friends were obdurate, so we all weighed that night; the Tinker bearing up for Jamaica, while we kept by the wind, steering for Conaives in St Domingo.

The third day we were off Cape St Nicholas, and getting a slant of wind from the westward, we ran up the Bight of Leogane all that night, but towards morning it fell calm; we were close in under the highland, about two miles from the shore, and the night was the darkest I ever was out in anywhere. There were neither moon nor stars to be seen, and the dark clouds settled down, until they appeared to rest upon our mastheads, compressing, as it were, the hot steamy air upon us until it became too dense for breathing. In the early part of the night it had rained in heavy showers now and then, and there were one or two faint flashes of lightning, and some heavy peals of thunder, which rolled amongst the distant hills in loud shaking reverberations, which gradually became fainter and fainter, until they grumbled away in the distance in hoarse murmurs, like the low notes of an organ in one of our old cathedrals; but now there was neither rain nor wind—all nature seemed fearfully hushed; for where we lay, in the smooth bight, there was no swell, not even a ripple on the glasslike sea; the sound of the shifting of a handspike, or the tread of the men, as they ran to haul on—a rope, or the creaking of the rudder, sounded loud and distinct. The sea in our neighbourhood was strongly phosphorescent, so that the smallest chip thrown overboard struck fire from the water, as if it had been a piece of iron cast on flint; and when you looked over the quarter, as I delight to do, and tried to penetrate into the dark clear profound beneath, you every now and then saw a burst of pale light, like a halo, far down in the depths of the green sea, caused by the motion of some fish, or of what Jack, no great natural philosopher, usually calls blubbers; and when the dolphin or skip-jack leapt into the air, they sparkled out from the still bosom of the deep dark water like rockets, until they fell again into their element in a flash of fire. This evening the corvette had showed no lights, and although I conjectured she was not far from us, still I could not with any certainty indicate her whereabouts. It might now have been about three o’clock, and I was standing on the aftermost gun on the starboard side, peering into the impervious darkness over the tafferel, with my dear old dog Sneezer by my side, nuzzling and fondling after his affectionate fashion, while the pilot, Peter Mangrove, stood within handspike length of me. The dog had been growling, but all in fun, and snapping at me, when in a moment he hauled off, planted his paws on the rail, looked forth into the night, and gave a short, anxious bark, Ii e the solitary pop of the sentry’s musket to alarm the main guard in outpost work.

Peter Mangrove advanced, and put his arm round the dog’s neck. “What you see, my shild?” said the black pilot.

Sneezer uplifted his voice, and gave a long continuous growl.

“Ah!” said Mangrove sharply, “Massa Captain, something near we—never doubt dat—de dog yeerie someting we can’t yeerie, and see someting we can’t see.”

I had lived long enough never to despise any caution, from whatever quarter it proceeded. So I listened, still as a stone. Presently I thought I heard the distant splash of oars. I placed my hand behind my ear, and waited with breathless attention. Immediately I saw the sparkling dip of them in the calm black water, as if a boat, and a large one, was pulling very fast towards us. “Look out, hail that boat,” said I.

“Boat ahoy!” sung out the man, to whom I had spoken. No answer. “Coming here?” reiterated the seaman. No better success. The boat or canoe, or whatever it might be, was by this time close aboard of us, within pistol-shot at the farthest—no time to be lost, so I hailed myself, and this time the challenge did produce an answer.

“Sore boat-fruit and wegitab.”

“Shore boat, with fruit and vegetables, at this time of night—I don’t like it,” said I. “Boatswain’s mate,—all hands—pipe away the boarders. Cutlasses, men—quick, a piratical row—boat is close to.” And verily we had little time to lose, when a large canoe or row—boat, pulling twelve oars at the fewest, and carrying twenty—five men, or thereabouts, swept up on our larboard quarter, hooked on, and the next moment upwards of twenty unlooked—for visitors scrambled up our shallow side, and jumped on board. All this took place so suddenly that there were not ten of my people ready to receive them, but those ten were the prime men of the ship.

“Surrender, you scoundrels—surrender. You have boarded a man-of-war. Down with your arms, or we shall kill you to a man.”

But they either did not understand me, or did not believe me, for the answer was a blow from a cutlass, which, if I had not parried with my night-glass, which it broke in pieces, might have effectually stopped my promotion.

“Cut them down, boarders, down with them—they are pirates,” shouted I; “heave cold shot into their boat alongside—all hands, Mr Rousemout,” to the boatswain, “call all hands.”

We closed. The assailants had no firearms, but they were armed with swords and long knives, and as they fought with desperation, several of our people were cruelly haggled; and after the first charge, the combatants on both sides became so blended, that it was impossible to strike a blow, without running the risk of cutting down a friend. By this time all hands were on deck; the boat alongside had been swamped by the cold shot that had been hove crashing through her bottom, when down came a shower from the surcharged clouds, or waterspout—call it which you will—that absolutely deluged the decks, the scuppers being utterly unable to carry off the water. So long as the pirates fought in a body, I had no fears, as, dark as it was, our men, who held together, knew where to strike and thrust; but when the torrent of rain descended in bucketfuls, the former broke away, and were pursued singly into various corners about the deck, all escape being cut off from the swamping of their boat. Still they were not vanquished, and I ran aft to the binnacle, where a blue light was stowed away,—one of several that we had got on deck to bum that night, in order to point out our whereabouts to the Firebrand. I fired it, and rushing forward cutlass-in-hand, we set on the gang of black desperadoes with such fury, that after killing two of them outright, and wounding and taking prisoners seven, we drove the rest overboard into the sea, where the small-armed men, who by this time had tackled to their muskets, made short work of them, guided as they were by the sparkling of the dark water, as they struck out and swam for their lives. The blue light was immediately answered by another from the corvette, which lay about a mile off; but before her boats, two of which were immediately armed and manned, could reach us, we had defeated our antagonists, and the rain had increased to such a degree, that the heavy drops, as they fell with a strong rushing noise into the sea, flashed it up into one entire sheet of fire.

We—secured our prisoners, all blacks and mulattoes, the most villainous looking scoundrels I had ever seen, and shortly after it came on to thunder and lighten, as if heaven and earth had been falling together. A most vivid flash—it almost blinded me. Presently the Firebrand burnt another blue light, whereby we saw that her maintopmast was gone close by the cap, with the topsail, and upper spars, and yards, and gear, all hanging down in a lumbering mass of confused wreck; she had been struck by the levin brand, which had killed four men, and stunned several more.

By this time the cold grey streaks of morning appeared in the eastern horizon, and soon after the day broke; and by two o’clock in the afternoon, both corvette and schooner were at anchor at Conaives. The village, for town it could not be called, stands on a low hot plain, as if the washings of the mountains on the left hand side as we stood in had been carried out into the sea, and formed into a white plateau of sand; all was hot and stunted, and scrubby. We brought up inside of the corvette, in three fathoms water. My superior officer had made the private signal to come on board and dine. I dressed, and the boat was lowered down, and we pulled for the corvette, but our course lay under the stern of the two English ships that were lying there loading cargoes of coffee.