Tom Cringle's Log Part 36

"Oh, Isaac Grimm, Isaac Grimm--tid not your heart mishgive you, ven you vas commit te great blasphemy of invoish Ezekiel--flesh of your flesh, pone of your pone--as por--de onclean peast, I mean. If you hat put invoish him ash peef, surely te earthly tabernacle of him, as always sheet in de high places in te Sinacogue, would never have been allow to pa.s.s troo te powels of te pers.h.i.+cuting Nazareen. Ah, mine goot captain mine very tear friend--vat--vat--vat av you done wid de cask, captain?"

"Oh most lame and impotent conclusion," sung out the judge, who by this time had become deucedly prosy, and all hands arose, as if by common consent, and agreed that we had got enough.

So off we started in groups.--Fyall, Captain Transom, Whiffle, Aaron Bang, and myself, sallied forth in a bunch, pretty well inclined for a lark, you may guess. There are no lamps in the streets of Kingston, and as all the decent part of the community are in their cavies by half-past nine in the evening, and as it was now "the witching time o'

night," there was not a soul in the streets that we saw, except a solitary town guard now and then, lurking about some dark corner under the piazzas. These same streets, which were wide and comfortable enough in the daytime, had become unaccountably narrow and intricate since six o'clock in the evening; and, although the object of the party was to convoy Captain Transom and myself to our boat at the Ordnance Wharf, it struck me that we were as frequently on a totally different tack.

"I say, Cringle, my boy," stuttered out my superior, Lieutenant and Captain being both drowned in and equalized by the claret--"why, Tom, Tom Cringle, you dog--don't you hear your superior officer speak, sir, eh?"

My superior officer, during this address, was standing with both arms round a pillar of the piazza.

"I am here, sir," said I.

"Why, I know that; but why don't you speak when I Hillo where's Aaron, and Fyall, and the rest, eh?"

They had been attracted by sounds of revelry in a splendid mansion in the next street, which we could see was lit up with great brilliancy, and had at this time shot about fifty yards ahead of us, working to windward, tack and tack, like Commodore Trunnion.

"Ah, I see," said Transom; "let us heave ahead, Tom--now, do ye hear?-- stand you with your white trowsers against the next pillar." The ranges supporting the piazza were at distances of about twenty feet from each other.--"Ah, stand there now--I see it."--So he weighted from the one he had tackled to, and making a staggering bolt of it, ran up to the pillar against which I stood, its position being marked by my white vestments, where he again hooked on for a second or two, until I had taken up a new position.

"There, my boy, that's the way to lay out a warp--right in the wind's eye, Tom--we shall fairly beat those lubbers who are tacking in the stream--nothing like warping in the dead water near the sh.o.r.e--mark that down, Tom--never beat in a tideway when you can warp up along sh.o.r.e in the dead water--d.a.m.n the judge's ice" (hiccup) "he has poisoned me with that piece he plopped in my last whitewash of Madeira. He a judge! He may be a good crim--criminal judge, but no judge of wine--Why don't you laugh, Tom, eh?--and then his saw--the rasp of a saw I hate--wish it, and a whole nest more, had been in his legal stomach--full of old saws Shakespeare--he, he--why don't you laugh, Tom?--Poisoned by the judge, by Jupiter--Now, here we are fairly abreast of them--Hillo! Fyall, what are you after?"

"Hush, hush," said Fyall, with drunken gravity.

"And hush, hush," said Aaron Bang.

"Come here, Tom, come here," said Whiffle, in a whisper. We were now directly under the piazza of the fine house, in the first floor of which some gay scene was enacting. "Here, Tom, here--now stand there--hold by that pillar there. I say, Transom, give me a lift."

"Can't, Whiffle, can't, for the soul of me, Peregrine, my dear--but I see, I see."

With that the gallant captain got down on all fours; Whiffle, a small light man, got on his back, and, with the aid of Bang and Fyall, managed to scramble up on my shoulders, where he stood, holding by the window sill above, with a foot on each side of my head. His little red face was thus raised flush with the window sill, so that he could see into the dark piazza on the first floor, and right through into the magnificent and sparkling drawing room beyond.

"Now tell us what's to be seen," said Aaron.

"Stop, stop," rejoined Whiffle--"My eye, what a lot of splendid women no men--a regular lady party--Hus.h.!.+ a song." A harp was struck, and a symphony of Beethoven's played with great taste--A song, low and melancholy, from two females followed.

"The music of the spheres!" quoth Whiffle.

We were rapt--we had been inspired before--and, drunk as we were, there we sat or stood, as best suited us, exhibiting the strange sight of a cl.u.s.ter of silent tipsy men. At length, at one of the finest swells, I heard a curious gurgling sound overhead, as if some one was being gagged, and I fancied Peregrine became lighter on my shoulders--Another fine dieaway note--I was sure of it.

"Bang, Bang--Fyall--He is evaporating with delight--no weight at all, growing more and more ethereal--lighter and lighter, as I am a gentleman he is off--going, going, gone--exhaled into the blue heavens, by all that is wonderful!"

Puzzled beyond measure, I stept hurriedly back, and capsized over the captain, who was still enacting the joint-stool on all-fours behind me, by which Whiffle had mounted to my crosstrees, and there we rolled in the sand, master and man.

"Murdered, Tom Cringle--murdered--you have hogged me like the old Ramilies--broke my back, Tom--spoiled my quadrilling for ever and a day; d----n the judge's ice though, and the saw particularly."

"Where is he--where is Whiffle?" enquired all hands, in a volley.

"The devil only knows," said I; "he has flown up into the clouds, catch him who can. He has left this earth anyhow, that is clear."

"Ha, ha!" cried Fyall, in great glee, who had seen him drawn into the window by several white figures, after they had tied a silk handkerchief over his mouth; "Follow me, my boys;" and we all scrambled after him to the front door of the house, to which we ascended by a handsome flight of marble steps, and when there, we began to thunder away for admittance. The door was opened by a very respectable looking elderly gentleman, with well powdered hair, and attended by two menservants in handsome liveries, carrying lights. His bearing and gentlemanlike deportment had an immediate effect on me, and I believe on the others too. He knew Fyall and Whiffle, it appeared.

"Mr Fyall," he said, with much gentleness, "I know it is only meant as a frolic, but really I hope you will now end it. Amongst yourselves, gentlemen, this may be all very well, but considering my religion, and the slights we Hebrews are so often exposed to, myself and my family are more sensitive and pervious to insult than you can well understand."

"My dear fellow," quoth Fyall, "we are all very sorry; the fact is, we had some d----d bad shaddock after dinner, which has made us very giddy and foolish somehow. Do you know, I could almost fancy I had been drinking wine."

"Cool and deliciously impudent that same, (hiccup,)" quoth the skipper.

"But hand us back little Whiffle," continued Fyall, "and we shall be off."

Here Whiffie's voice was heard from the drawing room. "Here, Fyall!-- Tom Cringle!--Here, here, or I shall be murdered!"

"Ah! I see," said Mr H. "this way, gentlemen. Come, I will deliver the culprit to you;" and we followed him into the drawing room, a most magnificent saloon, at least forty feet by thirty, brilliantly lit up with crystal lamps, and ma.s.sive silver candelabra, and filled with elegant furniture, which was reflected, along with the chandeliers that hung from the centre of the coach roof, by several large mirrors, in rich frames, as well as in the highly polished mahogany floor.

There, in the middle of the room, the other end of it being occupied by a bevy of twelve or fifteen richly-dressed females, visitors, as we conjectured, sat our friend Peregrine, pinioned into a large easy chair, with shawls and scarfs, amidst a sea of silk cus.h.i.+ons, by four beautiful young women, black hair and eyes, clear white skins, fine figures, and little clothing. A young Jewess is a beautiful animal, although, like the unclean--confound the metaphor--which they abhor--they don't improve by age.

When we entered, the blus.h.i.+ng girls, who had been beating Whiffle over his spindle s.h.i.+ns, with their large garden fans, dashed through a side door, unable to contain their laughter, which we heard long after they had vanished, echoing through the lofty galleries of the house. Our captive knight being restored to us, we made our bows to the other ladies, who were expiring with laughter, and took our leave, with little Whiffle on our shoulders--the worthy Hebrew, whom I afterwards knew in London, sending his servant and gig with Captain Transom and myself to the wharf. There we tumbled ourselves into the boat, and got on board the Firebrand about three in the morning. We were by this time pretty well sobered; at four a gun was fired, the topsails were let fall, and sheeted home, and topgallant-sails set over them, the s.h.i.+p having previously been hove short; at half-past, the cable being right up and down--another gun the drums and fifes beat merrily, spin flew the capstan, tramp went the men that manned it. We were under weigh-- Eastward, ho!--for Santiago de Cuba.

CHAPTER XII.--The Cruise o the Firebrand

Shewing, amongst other pleasant matters well worthy of being recorded, how Thomas communed with his two Consciences.

"Oh, who can tell, save he whose heart hath tried, And danced in triumph o'er the waters wide, The exulting sense, the pulse's maddening play, That thrills the wanderer of that trackless way?"

Byron, The Corsair, 1.9--16.

We had to beat up for three days before we could weather the east end of Jamaica, and tearing work we had of it. I had seen bad weather and heavy seas in several quarters of the globe--I had tumbled about under a close-reefed main-topsail and reefed foresail, on the long seas in the Bay of Biscay--I had been kicked about in a seventy-four, off the Cape of Good Hope, as if she had been a cork--I had been hove hither and thither, by the short jumble of the North Sea, about Heligoland, and the shoals lying off the mouth of the Elbe, when every thing over head was black as thunder, and all beneath as white as snow--I had enjoyed the luxury of being tom in pieces by a northwester, which compelled us to lie-to for ten days at a stretch, under storm stay-sails, off the coast of Yankeeland, with a clear, deep, cold, blue sky above us, without a cloud, where the sun shone brightly the whole time by day, and a glorious harvest moon by night, as if they were smiling in derision upon our riven and strained s.h.i.+p, as she reeled to and fro like a wounded t.i.tan; at one time buried in the trough of the sea, at another cast upwards towards the heavens by the throes of the tormented waters, from the troubled bosom of the bounding and roaring ocean, amidst hundreds of miniature rainbows, (ay, rainbows by night as well as by day,) in a hissing storm of white, foaming, seething spray, torn from the curling and rolling bright green crests of the mountainous billows.

And I have had more than one narrow squeak for it in the neighbourhood of the "still vexed Bermoothes," besides various other small affairs, written in this Boke; but the devil such another tumblefication had I ever experienced-not as to danger, for there was none except to our spars and rigging, but as to discomfort as I did in that short, cross, splas.h.i.+ng, and boiling sea, off Morant Point. By noon, however, on the second day, having had a slant from the land wind in the night previous, we got well to windward of the long sandy spit that forms the east end of the island, and were in the act of getting a small pull of the weather braces, before edging away for St Jago, when the wind fell suddenly, and in half an hour it was stark calm--'una furiosa calma,' as the Spanish sailors quaintly enough call it.

We got rolling tackles up, and the topgallant-masts down, and studding sails out of the tops, and lessened the lumber and weight aloft in every way we could think of, but, nevertheless, we continued to roll gunwale under, dipping the main-yardarm into the water every now and then, and setting every thing adrift, below and on deck, that was not bolted down, or otherwise well secured.

When I went down to dinner, the scene was extremely good. Old Yerk, the first lieutenant, was in the chair--one of the boys was jammed at his side, with his claws fastened round the foot of the table, holding a tureen of boiling pease-soup, with lumps of pork swimming in it, which the aforesaid Yerk was baling forth with great a.s.siduity to his messmates. Hydrostatics were much in vogue--the tendency of fluids to regain their equilibrium (confound them, they have often in the shape of claret destroyed mine) was beautifully ill.u.s.trated, as the contents of each carefully balanced soup-plate kept swaying about on the principle of the spirit level. The Doctor was croupier, and as it was a return to dinner to the captain, all hands were regularly figged out, the lieutenants, with their epaulets and best coats, and the master, purser, and doctor, all fittingly attired. When I first entered, as I made my obeisance to the captain, I thought I saw an empty seat next him, but the matter of the soup was rather an engrossing concern, and took up my attention, so that I paid no particular regard to the circ.u.mstance; however, when we had all discussed the same, and were drinking our first gla.s.s of Tenerife, I raised my eyes to hob and n.o.b with the master, when ye G.o.ds and little fishes--who should they light on, but the merry phiz merry, also! no more--of Aaron Bang, Esquire, who, during the soup interlude, had slid into the vacant chair unperceived by me.

"Why, Mr Bang, where, in the name of all that is comical, where have you dropped from?" Alas! poor Aaron--Aaron in a rolling sea was of no kindred to Aaron ash.o.r.e. His rosy gills were no longer rosy, his round plump face seemed to be covered with parchment from an old ba.s.s drum, cut out from the centre where most bronzed by the drumstruck--there was no speculation in his eyes that he did glare withal--and his lips, which were usually firm and open, disclosing his nice teeth, in frequent grin, were held together, as if he had been in grievous pain. At length he did venture to open them--and, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, "it lifted up its head and did address itself to motion, as it would speak."

But they began to quiver, and he once more screwed them together, as if he feared the very exertion of uttering a word or two might unsettle his moniplies.

The master was an odd garrulous small man, who had a certain number of stated jokes, which, so long as they were endured, he unmercifully inflicted on his messmates. I had come in for my share, as a new comer, as well as the rest; but even with me, although I had been but recently appointed, they had already began to pall, and wax wearisome; and blind as the beetle of a body was, he could not help seeing this. So poor Bang, unable to return a shot, sea-sick and crestfallen, offered a target that he could not resist taking aim at. Dinner was half over, and Bang had not eaten any thing, when, unseasonable as the hour was, the little pot--valiant master, primed with two tumblers of grog, in defiance of the captain's presence, fairly fastened on him, like a remora, and pinned him down with one of his longwinded stories about Captain David Jones, in the Phantome, during a cruise off Cape Flyaway, having run foul of a whale, and thereby nearly foundered; and that at length having got the monster harpooned and speared, and the devil knows what, but it ended in getting her alongside, when they scuttled the leviathan, and then, wonderful to relate, they found a Greenlandman, with royal yards crossed, in her maw, and the captain and mate in the cabin quarrelling about the reckoning.

"What do you think of that, Mr Bang--as well they might be, Mr Bang--as well they might be?" Bang said nothing, but at the moment--whether the said Aaron lent wings to the bird or no I cannot tell--a goose, swimming in apple sauce, which he was, with a most stern countenance, endeavouring to carve, fetched away right over the gunwale of the dish; and taking a whole boat of melted b.u.t.ter with it, splashed across the table during a tremendous roll, that made every thing creak and groan again, right into the small master's lap who was his vis-a-vis. I could hear Aaron grumble out something about--"Strange affinity-birds of a feather." But his time was up, his minutes were numbered, and like a shot he bolted from the table, skulling or rather clawing away towards the door, by the backs of the chairs, like a green parrot, until he reached the marine at the bottom of the ladder, at the door of the captain's cabin, round whose neck he immediately fetterlocked his fins.

He had only time to exclaim to his new ally, "My dear fellow, get me some brandy and water, for the love of mercy"--when he blew up, with an explosion like the bursting of a steam-boiler--"Oh dear, oh dear," we could hear him murmuring in the lulls of his agony then another loud report--"there goes my yesterday's supper-hot grog and toasted cheese"

another roar, as if the spirit was leaving its earthly tabernacle "dinner-claret--Madeira--all cruel bad in a second edition-cheese, teal, and ringtail pigeon--black crabs calapi and turtle soup"--as his fleshly indulgences of the previous day rose up in judgment against him, like a man's evil deeds on his death-bed. At length-the various strata of his interior were entirely excavated--"Ah!--I have got to my breakfast-to the simple tea and toast at last.--Brandy and water, my dear Transom, brandy and water, my darling, hot, without sugar"--and "Brandy and water" died in echoes in the distance as he was stowed away into his cot in the captain's cabin. It seems that it had been all arranged between him and Transom, that he was to set off for St Thomas in the East, the morning on which we sailed, and to get a shove out in the pilot-boat schooner, from Morant Bay, to join us for the cruise; and accordingly he had come on board the night previous when I was below, and being somewhat qualmish he had wisely kept his cot; the fun of the thing depending, as it seemed, on all hands carefully keeping it from me that he was on board.

I apprehend most people indulge in the fancy that they have Consciences, such as they are. I myself now--even I, Thomas Cringle, Esquire, amongst sundry vain imaginings, conceive that I have a Conscience somewhat of the caoutchouc order I will confess stretching a little upon occasion, when the gale of my pa.s.sions blows high, nevertheless a highly respectable Conscience, as things go a stalwart unchancy customer, who will not be gainsaid or contradicted; but he may be disobeyed, although never with impunity. It is all true that a young, well-fledged gentlewoman, for she is furnished with a most swift pair of wings, called Prosperity, sometimes gets the better of Master Conscience, and smothers the Grim Feature for a time, under the bed of eider down, whereon you and her ladys.h.i.+p are reposing. But she is a sad jilt in many instances, this same Prosperity; for some fine morning, with the sun glancing in through the crevices of the window-shutters, just at the nick when, after turning yourself, and rubbing your eyes, you courageously thrust forth one leg, with a determination to don your gramashes without more delay. "Tom," says she "Tom Cringle, I have got tired of you, Thomas; besides, I hear my next door neighbour, Madame Adversity, tirling at the door pin; so give me my down bed, Tom, and I'm off." With that she bangs open the window, and before I recover from my surprise, launches forth, with a loud whir, mattra.s.s and all, leaving me, Pilgarlic, lying on the pailla.s.se. Well, her nest is scarcely cold, when in comes me Mistress Adversity, a wee outspoken sour crabbit gizzened anatomy of an old woman--"You ne'erdoweel, Tam," quoth she, "is it no enough that you consort with that scarlet limmer, who has just yescaped thorough the winday, but ye maun smoors my firstborn, puir Conscience, atween ye? Whare hae ye stowed him, mantell me that?" And the ancient damosel gives me a shrewd clip on the skull with the poker.

"That's right, mother," quoth Conscience, from beneath the straw mattra.s.s--"Give it to him--he'll no hear me another devel, mother." And I found that my own weight, deserted as I was by that--ahem--Prosperity, was no longer sufficient to keep him down. So up he rose, with a loud pech; and while the old woman keelhauled me with a poker on one side, he yerked at me on the other, until at length he gave me a regular cross b.u.t.tock, and then between them they diddled me outright. When I was fairly floored, "Now, my man," said Adversity, "I bear no spite; if you will but listen to my boy there, we shall be good friends still. He is never unreasonable. He has no objections to your consorting even with Madame Prosperity, in a decent way; but he will not consent to your letting her get the better of you, nor to your doting on her, even to the giving her a share of your bed, when she should never be allowed to get farther than the servants hall, for she should be kept in subjection, or she'll ruin you for ever, Thomas.--Conscience is a rough lad, I grant you, and I am keen and snell also; but never mind, take his advice, and you'll be some credit to your freens yet, ye sc.o.o.nrel." I did so, and the old lady's visits became shorter and shorter, and more and more distant, until at length they ceased altogether; and once more Prosperity, like a dove with its heaven-borrowed hues all glowing in the morning sun, pitched one morning on my windowsill. It was in June.

"Tom, I am come back again." I glowered at her with all my bir. She made a step or two towards me, and the lesson of Adversity was fast evaporating into thin air, when, lo! the sleeping lion himself awoke.