The White Squall Part 1

The White Squall.

by John Conroy Hutcheson.

CHAPTER ONE.

MOUNT PLEASANT.

"Jake!"

"Dat me, Ma.s.s' Tom."

"Have you heard the gun fire yet?"

"Golly, no, Ma.s.s' Tom."

"Then you must go up the hill at once and see whether the mail steamer has been signalled or not. She ought to have been in sight by now; for, she's been expected since early this morning, and we're all anxious about the news from England."

"All right, Ma.s.s' Tom, me go for see, suah."

"Look alive then, Jake, and lose no more time in starting. Let me just see how quickly you can get up to the Battery and back again; and mind, Jake, if the packet should be in, you can saddle my pony when you return for me to ride into town."

"Berry well, Ma.s.s' Tom. I'se spec, railly for true, um go dere in brace of shakes, an' back 'gain hyar 'fore dat lazy ole n.i.g.g.ah Pomp fetch him cutlash out o' stable an' go in bush to cut him guinea-gra.s.s for de hosses. Golly, dat so, Ma.s.s' Tom--see if um don't for suah, yah, yah!"

Jake broke off into a huge guffaw, as he shouted out these hurried words in high glee, laughing with all that hearty abandon which was such a strong characteristic of his genuine African nature. Such was the intensity of his merriment, indeed, that he opened his wide red-lipped mouth almost from ear to ear, disclosing a brilliant set of s.h.i.+ning teeth, whose ivory whiteness contrasted conspicuously with the jetty blackness of his sable skin. The willing fellow then went off on his mission at a slinging jog-trot, evidently determined to make his promise good of outstripping his more lethargic rival Pompey, whom he was absurdly jealous of and ever eager to surpa.s.s in every way he could.

I watched him on his onward way from the raised terrace, laid out as an ornamental garden, in front of our square, one-storied, s.h.i.+ngle-roofed, verandah-encircled West Indian home--which lay nestled in a gorgeous wealth of tropical foliage and was perched half-way up the side of a mountain peak that protected it from hurricane blasts in the rear; and, I could see Jake spinning rapidly along the winding carriage drive, bordered with cocoa-nut trees and grou-grou palms in lieu of the oaks and elms of old England. In another second, ere the sound of his merry chuckle had ceased to re-echo in the distance, he had pa.s.sed through the swing-gate that gave admittance to the grounds.

The lawn sloped downwards from the house, following the curve of the hill, and was studded with orange-trees, whose golden fruit peeped through their s.h.i.+ning green leaves, shaddocks, and mangosteen, with many a stately palmiste rearing its tall feathery head above the others; while, in addition, the wild locust, or iron-wood tree, the mammee apple, the pomme-rose and the guava bush flourished between huge blocks of stone, with flat table surfaces and of probable volcanic origin, that seemed to have been thrown at random upon the surface of the gra.s.sy expanse, where they now rested, monoliths of the past.

As the gate swung back upon its hinges with a clang, Jake's woolly head, surmounted by the veriest wisp of a ragged red handkerchief, disappeared behind the thick and impenetrable hedge of th.o.r.n.y cactus and spike- guarded p.r.i.c.kly-pear that inclosed the plantation, separating it from the main-road forming its boundary and leading, some four miles or so beyond, over mountain and gully to Saint George's, the capital town of Grenada, the most southern of the group of the Windward Islands--a spot where the earlier days of my rather adventurous life were pa.s.sed and which is endeared to me by all the vivid a.s.sociations of youth, the fond recollections of memory.

Our place was aptly named "Mount Pleasant," and well do I remember every salient feature of it--the forest of lofty silk-cotton trees, bordered on the left by a row of the curious _bois immortel_, with its blood-red branches that had blossomed into flowers; the mountain slope covered with green waving guinea-gra.s.s at the back; and in front the park-like lawn already described. To the right was a long range of negro huts and stabling; and, beyond these again the kitchen-garden or "provision ground," prolific of sweet-potatoes, yams, and tanias, with plantain and banana trees laden with pendent bunches of their sausage-shaped fruit and hedged round with pine-apples. Stretching away still further in the distance was the cocoa plantation, a sea of verdure, interspersed with the darker green foliage of the nutmeg and wax-like clove-tree. Here reigned in all its majesty the bread-fruit tree, with broad serrated leaves, like a gigantic horse-chestnut, sheltering the more fragile trees that grow only beneath its shadow, and acting as the "mother of the cocoa"--el madre del cacao--as the Spaniards call it.

But, I wish to go back now to the memorable day when Jake set off so briskly on his errand to see if the English mail steamer had arrived, leaving me on the terrace in front of our house wondering, as he speeded on his way, whether the packet was in sight; and, if she had been signalled, trying to surmise what news she would bring.

I was really very anxious about the matter, and I will tell you the reason why.

My father was an officer of the royal navy, who found it a hard thing, with an increasing family, to make both ends meet in the mother country on his half-pay. At last, sick of waiting for active employment afloat during the long stagnation in the service occasioned by the interregnum of peace that lasted almost from Waterloo up to the time of the Crimean war, he determined, like Cincinnatus, to "beat his sword into a ploughshare." In other words, he abandoned the fickle element on which he had pa.s.sed the early days of his manhood and emigrated to the West Indies, to see whether he might not improve his fortunes by investing what little capital he had in a coffee and cocoa plantation in the island where my scene opens. A couple of months or so before, he had taken a trip across the Atlantic to arrange some money matters with his London agent, and we were now expecting his return by every mail.

Beyond this, my father had more than half-hinted that, as soon as he got back to Grenada, he would send me over to England in my turn to go to school, when, most likely, I would have to bid adieu to my West Indian home for good and all; for, my fervent desire was to follow in dad's footsteps and enter the navy as soon as I was able to pa.s.s the admiralty examination--a desire to which dad, in spite of the scurvy way in which he had been treated by an ungrateful country, did not say nay, his ambition being that I should succeed where he failed if possible, for he was a true sailor and hankered after the sea yet.

It was not surprising, therefore, that I was so eager to learn whether the packet had come in, albeit her arrival would naturally bring to an end the little brief authority which I had been so proud to a.s.sume during dad's absence as the protector of my mother and sisters, besides being regarded by all the negro hands as "um lilly ma.s.sa of um plantashun." Really, I esteemed myself at that period to be a most important and highly dignified person, being only a boy of thirteen years old then, and small-grown for my age at that!

Jake had scarcely been out of sight five minutes when I began to look out for his return. My impatience, indeed, quite got the better of my reason, for I ought to have known well enough, if I had only considered, that he could not have yet half accomplished the journey to the signal station on Richmond Hill, much less thought even of coming back, the willing darkey being as unable as anyone else to annihilate distance or s.p.a.ce!

It was a terribly hot day, being close on to the noontide hour, the thermometer under the shade of the verandah where I stood marking over a hundred degrees; while, goodness only knew what it was out in the open, where the sun's blistering rays produced such intense heat that the paintwork of the green jalousie shutters outside the windows of the house fairly frizzled up in liquid blotches!

The air, too, was oppressively close and warm, just as when the door of an oven is opened in one's face, not a breath of wind stirring to agitate the still atmosphere; but, neither did this fact, nor did the blazing power of the glowing orb of day, which looked like a globe of fire in the centre of the heavens, affect the wild luxuriance of nature at Mount Pleasant.

As I gazed around, everything appeared to be invigorated instead of prostrated by the high temperature.

This seems to be the natural order of things in the tropics, that is, in respect of everything and everyone accustomed to broiling weather, like hot-house flowers and coloured gentry of the kidney of Jake and his sable brethren, whose ancestors, having been born under the sweltering equator, handed down to their descendants const.i.tutions of such a nature that they seem fairly to revel in the heat, and appear to be all the healthier and happier the hotter it is!

Ruby-throated humming-birds, with b.r.e.a.s.t.s of burnished gold, fluttered about the garden on the terrace in front of me in dainty flight, or else poised themselves in mid-air opposite the sweet-smelling blossoms of the frangipanni, their little wings moving so rapidly as to make them appear without motion; broad-backed b.u.t.terflies, with black stripes across their yellow uniforms, floated lazily about, purposelessly, doing nothing, as if they could not make up their minds to anything; and the scent of heliotropes and of big cabbage roses, that blossomed in profusion on trees larger than shrubs, almost intoxicated the senses.

The eye, too, was charmed at the same time by the pinky prodigality of the "Queen of Flowers," and the purple profusion of the convolvulus, their colours contrasting with the soft green foliage of the bay-tree; while great ma.s.ses of scarlet geranium, and myriad hues of different varieties of the balsam and Bird of Paradise plant were harmonised by the snowy chast.i.ty of the Cape jessamine and a hundred other sorts of lilies, of almost every tint, which encircled a warm-toned hibiscus, that seemed to lord it over them, the king of the floral world.

I was watching a little procession of "umbrella ants," as they are called, that were promenading across the marble flooring of the verandah, each of the tiny insects carrying above its head a tinier piece of the green leaf of some plant, apparently for the purpose of s.h.i.+elding itself from the sun, for they held up their shades just in the same way as a lady carries her parasol; when, all at once, I heard a heavy step outside, advancing along the terrace from the direction of the stables.

Without turning my head, or consulting watch or clock--or, even without looking up at the scorching sun overhead, had my eyes been sufficiently glare-proof to have stood the ordeal--I knew who the intruder was, and could have also told you that it was exactly mid-day.

Why?--you may ask perhaps.

You will learn in a moment.

The heavy footstep came a pace nearer, and then paused; when, looking round, I beheld an old negro, with a withered monkey-like face, clad in the ordinary conventional costume of an African labourer in the West Indies. His dress consisted of a loose pair of trousers and s.h.i.+rt of blue cotton check; and, on the top of his white woolly head was fixed on in some mysterious fas.h.i.+on a battered fragment of a straw hat, just of the sort that would be used by an English farmer as a scarecrow to frighten off the birds from his fields.

This was Pompey, Jake's rival; and, as he politely doffed his ragged head-gear with one hand, in deference to my dignity as "the young ma.s.sa," he held out to me with his other paw a wine-gla.s.s whose foot, if ever it had one, had been broken-off at some remote period of time.

I knew what Pompey wanted as well as he did himself, but for my own amus.e.m.e.nt, and in order to hear him make his usual stereotyped announcement, I asked him a leading question.

"Well, what is it?" I said.

"U'm come, rum!" was his laconic rejoinder--nothing more, but the sentence was sufficiently expressive.

Every day of the week, with the exception of Sundays, it had been always Pompey's privilege to have a quartern of rum served out to him, as if he were on board s.h.i.+p, at twelve o'clock, the ordinary grog-time; and, punctually at that hour every day, in the wet season or dry, he never failed to come up to the house for his allowance, bringing with him the footless wine-gla.s.s to receive the grateful liquor. His appearance, consequently, was an unfailing token that the sun had crossed the zenith and that it was time to "make it eight bells."

Unlike the majority of his dark-complexioned brethren, who are generally loquacious in the extreme, Pompey was singularly reticent of speech, never varying this parrot-like formula of his when coming at twelve o'clock for his daily stimulant, without which he would never set about his afternoon work.

"U'm come, rum!" was all he would say ever since he had been taken over by my father with the other belongings of the plantation; and, as he was an old "hand," the former proprietor related, and had always been similarly indulged with a quartern of rum at mid-day as far back as he could recollect, old Pompey--and precious old he must have been by this reckoning--had evidently grown into the habit, so that it was part of himself.

Entering the house through one of the low window-less windows which opened out on to the verandah, like the ports in the side of a s.h.i.+p-- ventilation being everything in the tropics and closed doors and shut-up rooms unheard of, as everybody was free to walk in and out of the different apartments just as they pleased--I soon brought out a case- bottle from the sideboard where it stood handy for the purpose. Then, filling the old darkey's footless wine-gla.s.s, which he held with a remarkably steady hand considering his age, he tossed off the contents without drawing breath, the fiery liquor disappearing down his throat with a sort of gurgling "gluck, gluck," as if it had been decanted into the capacious orifice, Pompey not even winking once during the operation.

"Tank you, Ma.s.s' Tom," said he, when he had sucked in the last drop; when, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he stalked off across the terrace again towards the stable to fetch his cutla.s.s to cut the guinea-gra.s.s for the horses, according to his usual habit at this time of day. This Jake well knew, by the bye, when he said he thought he would be able to return from his mission before the old fellow should have started, Pompey being as regular as clockwork in his movements, carrying out his daily routine most systematically.

I did not expect to see him again until later on in the afternoon on his return from the mountain at the back of the house, laden with a bale of provender for the stable, which he had charge of; but, what was my surprise a few minutes afterwards, to see him hurrying up again to the house, without his customary companion the cutla.s.s and in a state of great excitement most unaccountable in one generally so phlegmatic.

"Hullo, Pompey! what's the matter now?" I called out as he began to ascend the steps leading up to the terrace, his boots coming down with a heavy stamp on the marble surface. He was a most peculiar old fellow; for, unlike again most of the negroes, who only wear any foot covering on Sundays, when they torture themselves horribly by squeezing their spreading toes into patent leather pumps if they can get them by hook or by crook, the old darkey invariably stalked about in a tall pair of Wellington boots that made him walk as gingerly as a cat with its paws in walnut sh.e.l.ls.

"Hey, Ma.s.s' Tom, look smart," he sang out in response. "Um big 'guana down by de stable; come quick an' bring 'tick an' we kill him togedder!"

An iguana? This was something to make one excited; for, harmless though the reptile is, one does not come across one everyday. Besides, it is capital eating, tasting just like a chicken, and that of the tenderest: you could not tell the difference between the two when well cooked.

Catching up a thick stick, I was after Pompey in a minute, forgetting alike the heat of the sun's rays in the open--although but a short period before I had been forced to retreat under the shade of the verandah--and my anxious watch for Jake with news of the mail steamer, about whose delay I had been so impatient.

I soon overtook the darkey, who never could make much headway in his boots. They were so big for him that I believe his feet used to have a quiet walk inside them on their own account!

"Where's the 'guana?" I said.

"Just dere, Ma.s.s' Tom," he replied, pointing with one of his lean, bony, mottled fingers, the black colour of which seemed to have been worked off them by years of rough usage.