Tom Cringle's Log Part 60

Here our friend read the preceding paragraphs. They did not please him.

"Don't like it, Tom."

"No? Pray, why, my dear sir?--I have tried to" "Hold your tongue, my good boy."

"Cease, rude Boreas, bl.u.s.tering railer, List old ladies o'er your tea, At description Tom's a tailor, When he is compared to me.

Tooral looral loo."

"Attend--brevity is the soul of wit,--ahem. Listen how I shall crush all your lengthy yam into an eggsh.e.l.l. 'The Bight of Leogane is a horseshoe--Cape St Nicholas is the caulker on the northern heel Cape Tiberoon, the ditto on the south--Port-au-Prince is the tip at the toe towards the east--Conaives, Leogane, Pet.i.t Trouve, &c. &c. &c. are the nails, and the Island of Gonave is the frog.' Now every human being who knows that a horse has four legs and a tail--of course this includes all the human race, excepting tailors and sailors--must understand this at once; it is palpable and plain, although no man could have put it so perspicuously, excepting my friend William Cobbettt or myself. By the way, speaking of horses, that blood thing of the old Baron's nearly gave you your quietus t'other day, Tom. Why will you always pa.s.s the flank of a horse in place of going ahead of him, to use your own phrase?

Never ride near a led horse on pa.s.sing when you can help it; give him a wide berth, or clap the groom's corpus between you and his heels; and never, never go near the croup of any quadruped bigger than a cat, for even a cow's is inconvenient, when you can by any possibility help it."

I laughed--"Well, well, my dear sir--but you undervalue my equestrian capability somewhat too, for I do pretend to know that a horse has four legs and a tail."

There was no pleasing Aaron this morning, I saw.

"Then, Tummas, my man, you know a deuced deal more than I do. As for the tail, conceditur--but devilish few horses have four legs nowadays, take my word for it. However, here comes Transom; I am off to have a lounge with him, and I will finish the veterinary lecture at some more convenient season. Tol lol de rol."--Exit singing.

The morning after this I went ash.o.r.e at daylight, and, guided by the sound of military music, proceeded to the Place Republicain, or square before President Petion's palaces where I found eight regiments of foot under arms, with their bands playing, and in the act of defiling before General Boyer who commanded the arrondiss.e.m.e.nt. This was the garrison of Port-au-Prince, but neither the personal appearance of the troops, nor their appointments, were at all equal to those of King Henry's well dressed and well drilled cohorts that we saw at Conaives. The President's guards were certainly fine men, and a squadron of dismounted cavalry, in splendid blue uniforms, with scarlet trowsers richly laced, might have vied with the elite of Nap's own, barring the black faces.

But the materiel of the other regiments was not superfine, as M. Boyer, before whom they were defiling, might have said.

I went to breakfast with Mr S----, one of the English merchants of the place, a kind and most hospitable man; and under his guidance, the Captain, Mr Bang, and I, proceeded afterwards to call on Petion.

Christophe, or King Henry, had some time before retired from the siege of Port-au-Prince, and we found the town in a very miserable state.

Many of the houses were injured from shot; the President's palace, for instance, was perforated in several places, which had not been repaired.

In the antechamber you could see the blue heavens through the shot holes in the roof.--"Next time I come to court, Tom," said Mr Bang, "I will bring an umbrella." Turning out of the parade, we pa.s.sed through a rickety, unpainted open gate, in a wall about six feet high; the s.p.a.ce beyond was an open green or gra.s.s-plot, parched and burned up by the sun, with a common fowl here and there fluttering and hotching in the hole she had scratched in the and soil; but there was neither sentry nor servant to be seen, nor any of the usual pomp and circ.u.mstance about a great man's dwelling. Presently we were in front of a long, low, one story building, with a flight of steps leading up into an entrance hall, furnished with several gaudy sofas, and half-a-dozen chairs with a plain wooden floor, on which a slight approach to the usual West India polish had been attempted, but mightily behind the elegant domiciles of my Kingston friends in this respect. In the centre of this room stood three young officers, fair mulattoes, with their plumed c.o.c.ked-hats in their hands, and dressed very handsomely in French uniforms; and it always struck me as curious, that men who hated the very name of Frenchman, as the devil hates holy water, should copy all the customs and manners of the detested people so closely. I may mention here once for all, that Petion's officers, who, generally speaking, were all men of colour, and not negroes, were as much superior in education, and, I fear I must say, in intellect, as they certainly were in personal appearance, to the black officers of King Henry, as his soldiery were superior to those of the neighbouring black republic.

"Ah, Monsieur S----, comment vous portez vous? je suis bien aise de vous voir," said one of the young officers; "how are you, how have you been?"

"Vous devenez tout a fait rare," quoth a second. "Le President will be delighted to see you. Why, he says he thought you must have been dead, and les messieurs La...."

"Who?--introduce us."

It was done in due form--the Honourable Captain Transom, Captain Cringle of his Britannic Majesty's schooner, Wave, and Aaron Bang, Esquire. And presently we were all as thick as pickpockets.

"But come, the President will be delighted to see you." We followed the officer who spoke, as he marshalled us along, and in an inner chamber, wherein there were also several large holes in the ceiling through which the sun shone, we found President Petion, the black Was.h.i.+ngton, sitting on a very old ragged sofa, amidst a confused ma.s.s of papers, dressed in a blue military undress frock, white trowsers, and the everlasting Madras handkerchief bound round his brows. He was much darker than I expected to have seen him, darker than one usually sees a mulatto, or the direct cross between the negro and the white, yet his features were in no way akin to those of an African. His nose was as high, sharp, and well defined as that of any Hindoo I ever saw in the Hoogly, and his hair was fine and silky. In fact, dark as he was, he was at least three removes from the African; and when I mention that he had been long in Europe--he was even for a short s.p.a.ce acting adjutant general of the army of Italy with Napoleon--his general manner, which was extremely good, kind and affable, was not matter of so much surprise.

He rose to receive us with much grace, and entered into conversation with all the ease and polish of a gentleman--"le me porte a.s.sez bien aujourd'hui; but I have been very unwell, M. S----, so tell me the news." Early as it was, he immediately ordered in coffee; it was brought by two black servants, followed by a most sylph-like girl, about twelve years of age, the President's natural daughter; she was fairer than her father, and acquitted herself very gracefully. She was rigged, pin for pin, like a little woman, with a perfect turret of artificial flowers twined amongst the braids of her beautiful hair; and although her neck was rather overloaded with ornaments, and her poor little ears were stretching under the weight of the heavy gold and emerald earrings, while her bracelets were like manacles, yet I had never seen a more lovely little girl. She wore a frock of green Chinese c.r.a.pe, beneath which appeared the prettiest little feet in the world.

We were invited to attend a ball in the evening, given in honour of the President's birthday, and after a sumptuous dinner at our friend M. S----'s, we all adjourned to the gay scene. There was a company of grenadiers of the President's guard, with their band, on duty in front of the palace, as a guard of honour; they carried arms as we pa.s.sed, all in good style; and at the door we met two aides-de-camp in full dress, one of whom ushered us into an anteroom, where a crowd of brown, with a sprinkling of black ladies, and a whole host of brown and black officers, with a white foreign merchant here and there, were drinking coffee, and taking refreshments of one kind or another. The ladies were dressed in the very height of the newest Parisian fas.h.i.+on of the day hats and feathers, and jewellery, real or fict.i.tious, short sleeves, and shorter petticoats fine silks, and broad blonde tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs and flounces, and low-cut corsages--some of them even venturing on rouge, which gave them the appearance of purple dahlias; but as to manner, all lady-like and proper; while the men, most of them militaires, were as fine as gold and silver lace, and gay uniforms, and dress-swords could make them and all was blaze, and sparkle, and jingle; but the black officers, in general, covered their woolly pates with Madras handkerchiefs, as if ashamed to show them, the brown officers alone venturing to show their own hair. Presently a military band struck up with a sudden crash in the inner-room, and the large folding doors being thrown open, the ballroom lay before us, in the centre of which stood the President, surrounded by his very splendid staff, with his daughter on his arm. He was dressed in a plain blue uniform, with gold epaulets, and acquitted himself extremely well, conversing freely on European politics, and giving his remarks with great shrewdness, and a very peculiar naivete.

As for his daughter, however much she might appear to have been overdressed in the morning, she was now simple in her attire as a little shepherdesses plain white muslin frock, white sash, white shoes, white gloves, pearl ear-rings and necklace, and a simple, but most beautiful, camilla j.a.ponica in her hair. Dancing now commenced, and all that I shall say is, that before I had been an hour in the room, I had forgotten whether the faces around me were black, brown, or white; every thing was conducted with such decorum. However, I could see that the fine jet was not altogether the approved style of beauty, and that many a very handsome woolly-headed belle was destined to ornament the walls, until a few of the young white merchants made a dash amongst them, more for the fun of the thing, as it struck me, than any thing else, which piqued some of the brown officers, and for the rest of the evening blackee had it hollow. And there was friend Aaron waltzing with a very splendid woman, elegantly dressed, but black as a coal, with long kid gloves, between which and the sleeve of her gown, a s.p.a.ce of two inches of the black skin, like an ebony armlet, was visible; while her white dress, and rich white satin hat, and a lofty plume of feathers, with a pearl necklace and diamond earrings, set off her loveliness most conspicuously. At every wheel round Mr Bang slewed his head a little on one side, and peeped in at one of her bright eyes, and then tossing his cranium on t'other side, took a squint in at the other, and then cast his eyes towards the roof, and muttered with his lips as if he had been shot all of a heap by the blind boy's but-shaft; but every now and then as we pa.s.sed, the rogue would stick his tongue in his cheek, yet so slightly as to be perceptible to no one but myself. After this heat, Ma.s.sa Aaron and myself were perambulating the ballroom, quite satisfied with our own prowess and I was churming to myself, "Voulez vous dansez, mademoiselle"--"De tout mon coeur," said a buxom brown dame, about eighteen stone by the coffee-mill in St James's Street. That devil Aaron gave me a look that I swore I would pay him for, the villain; as the extensive mademoiselle, suiting the action to the word, started up, and hooked on, and as a cotillion had been called, there I was, figuring away most emphatically, to Bang and Transom's great entertainment. At length the dance was at an end, And a waltz was once more called, and having done my duty, I thought I might slip out between the acts; so I offered to hand my solid armful to her seat--"Certainement vouz pouvez bien restez encore un moment."

The devil confound you and Aaron Bang, thought I--but waltz I must, and away we whirled until the room spun round faster than we did, and when I was at length emanc.i.p.ated, my dark fair and fat one whispered, in a regular die-away, "J'espere vous revoir bientot." All this while there was a heavy firing of champagne and other corks, and the fun grew so fast and furious, that I remembered very little more of the matter, until the morning breeze whistled through my muslin curtains, or musquitto net, about noon on the following day.

I arose, and found mine host setting out to bathe at Madame Le Clerc's bath, at Marquesan. I rode with him; and after a cool dip we breakfasted with President Petion at his country-house there, and met with great kindness. About the house itself there was nothing particularly to distinguish it from many others in the neighbourhood; but the little statues, and fragments of marble steps, and detached portions of old fas.h.i.+oned wrought-iron railing, which had been grouped together, so as to form an ornamental terrace below it, facing the sea, showed that it had been a compilation from the ruins of the houses of the rich French planters, which were now blackening in the sun on the plain of Leogane.

A couple of Buenos Ayrean privateers were riding at anchor in the bight just below the windows, manned, as I afterwards found, by Americans.

The President, in his quiet way, after contemplating them through his gla.s.s, said, "Ces pavilions sont bien neuf."

The next morning, as we were pulling in my gig, no less a man than Ma.s.sa Aaron steering, to board the Arethusa, one of the merchantmen lying at anchor off the town, we were nearly run down by getting athwart the bows of an American schooner standing in for the port. As it was, her cut.w.a.ter gave us so smart a crack that I thought we were done for; but our Palinurus, finding he could not clear her, with his inherent self possession put his helm to port, and kept away on the same course as the schooner, so that we got off with the loss of our two larboard oars, which were snapped off like parsnips, and a good heavy b.u.mp that nearly drove us into staves.

"Never mind, my dear sir, never mind," said I; "but hereafter listen to the old song:"

'Steer clear of the stem of a sailing s.h.i.+p.'

"Ma.s.sa Aaron was down on me like lightning"

"Or the stern of a kicking horse, Tom."

While I continued--

'Or you a wet jacket may catch, and a dip.'

He again cleverly clipped the word out of my mouth,

"Or a kick on the croup, which is worse, Tom."

"Why, my dear sir, you are an improvisatore of the first quality."

We rowed ash.o.r.e, and nothing particular happened that day, until we sat down to dinner at Mr S--'s. We had a very agreeable party. Captain Transom and Mr Bang were, as usual, the life of the company; and it was verging towards eight o'clock in the evening, when an English sailor, apparently belonging to the merchant service, came into the piazza, and planted himself opposite to the window where I sat.

He made various nautical salaams, until he had attracted my attention.

"Excuse me," I said to Mr S----, "there is some one in the piazza wanting me." I rose.

"Are you Captain Transom?" said the man.

"No, I am not. There is the Captain; do you want him?"

"If you please, sir," said the man.

I called my superior officer into the narrow dark piazza.

"Well, my man," said Transom, "what want you with me?"

"I am sent, sir, to you from the Captain of the Haytian s.h.i.+p, the E----, to request a visit from you, and to ask for a prayer book."

"A what?" said Transom.

"A prayer book, sir. I suppose you know that he and the Captain of that other Haytian s.h.i.+p, the P----, are condemned to be shot tomorrow morning."

"I know nothing of all this," said Transom. "Do you, Cringle?"

"No, sir," said I.

"Then let us adjourn to the dining room again; or, stop, ask Mr S----and Mr Bang to step-here for a moment."

They appeared; and when Transom explained the affair, so far as consisted with his knowledge, Mr S----told us that the two unfortunates in question were, one of them, a Guernsey man, and the other a man of colour, a native of St Vincent's, whom the President had promoted to the command of two Haytian s.h.i.+ps that had been employed in carrying coffee to England; but on their last return voyage, they had introduced a quant.i.ty of base Birmingham coin into the Republic; which fact having been proved on their trial, they had been convicted of treason against the state, condemned, and were now under sentence of death; and the government being purely military, they were to be shot tomorrow morning.

A boat was immediately sent on board, the messenger returned with a prayer book; and we prepared to visit the miserable men.

Mr Bang insisted on joining us--ever first where misery was to be relieved--and we proceeded towards the prison. Following the sailor, who was the mate of one of the s.h.i.+ps, presently we arrived before the door of the place where the unfortunate men were confined. We were speedily admitted; but the building had none of the common appurtenances of a prison. There were neither long galleries, nor strong ironbound and clamped doors, to pa.s.s through; nor jailers with rusty keys jingling; nor fetters clanking; for we had not made two steps past the black grenadiers who guarded the door, when a sergeant showed us into a long ill-lighted room, about thirty feet by twelve--in truth, it was more like a gallery than a room--with the windows into the street open, and no precautions taken, apparently at least, to prevent the escape of the condemned. In truth, if they had broken forth, I imagine the kind hearted President would not have made any very serious enquiry as to the how.