Tom Cringle's Log

by Michael Scott

  We left the house, and walked half a mile down the Quay.

  Presently we arrived before a kind of low grog-shop—a bright lamp was flaring in the breeze at the door, one of the panes of the glass of it being broken.

  “Before I entered, Mr Treenail took me to one side—”Tom, Tom Cringle, you must go into this crimp-shop; pass yourself off for an apprentice of the Guava, bound for Trinidad, the ship that arrived just as we started, and pick up all the knowledge you can regarding the whereabouts of the men, for we are, as you know, cruelly ill manned, and must replenish as we best may.” I entered the house, after having agreed to rejoin my superior officer so soon as I considered I had obtained my object. I rapped at the inner door, in which there was a small unglazed aperture cut, about four inches square; and I now, for the first time, perceived that a strong glare of light was cast into the lobby, where I stood, by a large argand with a brilliant reflector, that, like a magazine lantern, had been mortised into the bulkhead, at a height of about two feet above the door in which the spy-hole was cut. My first signal was not attended to; I rapped again, and, looking round, I noticed Mr Treenail flitting backwards and forwards across the doorway, in the rain, his pale face and his sharp nose, with the sparkling drop at the end on’t, glancing in the light of the lamp. I heard a step within, and a very pretty face now appeared at the wicket.

  “Who are you saking here, an’ please ye?”

  “No one in particular, my dear; but if you don’t let me in, I shall be lodged in jail before five minutes be over.”

  “I can’t help that, young man,” said she; “but where are ye from, darling?”

  “Hush—I am run from the Guava, now lying at the Cove.”

  “Oh,” said my beauty, “come in;” and she opened the door, but still kept it on the chain in such a way, that although, by bobbing, I creeped and slid in beneath it, yet a common-sized man could not possibly have squeezed himself through. The instant I entered, the door was once more banged to, and the next moment I was ushered into the kitchen, a room about fourteen feet square, with a well-sanded floor, a huge dresser on one side, and over against it a respectable show of pewter dishes in racks against the wall. There was a long stripe of a deal table in the middle of the room—but no tablecloth—at the bottom of which sat a large, bloated, brandy, or rather whisky faced savage, dressed in a shabby greatcoat of the hodden grey worn by the Irish peasantry, dirty swandown vest, and greasy corduroy breeches, worsted stockings, and well-patched shoes; he was smoking a long pipe. Around the table sat about a dozen seamen, from whose wet jackets and trousers the heat of the blazing fire, that roared up the chimney, sent up a smoky steam that cast a halo round a lamp which depended from the roof, and hung down within two feet of the table, stinking abominably of coarse whale oil. They were, generally speaking, hardy, weather-beaten men, and the greater proportion half, or more than half, drunk. When I entered, I walked up to the landlord.

  “Yo ho, my young un! Whence and whither bound, my hearty?”

  “The first don’t signify much to you,” said I, “seeing I have wherewithal in my locker to pay my shot; and as to the second, of that hereafter; so, old boy, let’s have some grog, and then say if you can ship me with one of them colliers that are lying alongside the quay?”

  “My eye, what a lot of brass that small chap has!” grumbled mine host. “Why, my lad, we shall see to-morrow morning; but you gammons so about the rhino, that we must prove you a bit; so, Kate, my dear,”—to the pretty girl who had let me in—”score a pint of rum against—Why, what is your name?”

  “What’s that to you?” rejoined I, “let’s have the drink, and don’t doubt but the shiners shall be forthcoming.”

  “Hurrah!” shouted the party, most of them now very tipsy. So the rum was produced forthwith, and as I lighted a pipe and filled a glass of swizzle, I struck in, “Messmates, I hope you have all shipped?”

  “No, we han’t,” said some of them.

  “Nor shall we be in any hurry, boy,” said others.

  “Do as you please, but I shall, as soon as I can, I know; and I recommend all of you making yourselves scarce to-night, and keeping a bright look-out.”

  “Why, boy, why?”

  “Simply because I have just escaped a press-gang, by bracing sharp up at the corner of the street, and shoving into this dark alley here.”

  This called forth another volley of oaths and unsavoury exclamations, and all was bustle and confusion, and packing up of bundles, and settling of reckonings.

  “Where,” said one of the seamen,—”where do you go to, my lad?”

  “Why, if I can’t get shipped to-night, I shall trundle down to Cove immediately, so as to cross at Passage before daylight, and take my chance of shipping with some of the outward-bound that are to sail, if the wind holds, the day after to-morrow. There is to be no pressing when the blue Peter flies at the fore—and that was hoisted this afternoon, I know, and the foretopsail will be loose to-morrow.

  “D——n my wig, but the small chap is right,” roared one.

  “I’ve a bloody great mind to go down with him,” stuttered another, after several unavailing attempts to weigh from the bench, where he had brought himself to anchor.

  “Hurrah!” yelled a third, as he hugged me, and nearly suffocated me with his maudlin caresses, “I trundles wid you too, my darling, by the piper!”

  “Have with you, boy—have with you,” shouted half-a-dozen other voices, while each stuck his oaken twig through the handkerchief that held his bundle, and shouldered it, clapping his straw or tarpaulin hat, with a slap on the crown, on one side of his head, and staggering and swaying about under the influence of the poteen, and slapping his thigh, as he bent double, laughing like to split himself, till the water ran over his cheeks from his drunken half-shut eyes, while jets of tobacco-juice were squirting in all directions.

  I paid the reckoning, urging the party to proceed all the while, and indicating Pat Doolan’s at the Cove as a good rendezvous; and, promising to overtake them before they reached Passage, I parted company at the corner of the street, and rejoined the lieutenant.

  Next morning we spent in looking about the town—Cork is a fine town—contains seventy thousand inhabitants more or less—safe in that—and three hundred thousand pigs, driven by herdsmen, with coarse grey greatcoats. The pigs are not so handsome as those in England, where the legs are short, and tails curly; here the legs are long, the flanks sharp and thin, and tails long and straight.

  All classes speak with a deuced brogue, and worship graven images; arrived at Cove to a late dinner—and here follows a great deal of nonsense of the same kind.

  By the time it was half-past ten o’clock, I was preparing to turn in, when the master at arms called down to me,—

  “Mr Cringle, you are wanted in the gunroom.”

  I put on my jacket again, and immediately proceeded thither, and on my way I noticed a group of seamen, standing on the starboard gangway, dressed in pea-jackets, under which, by the light of a lantern, carried by one of them, I could see they were all armed with pistol and cutlass. They appeared in great glee, and as they made way for me, I could hear one fellow whisper, “There goes the little beagle.” When I entered the gunroom, the first-lieutenant, master, and purser, were sitting smoking and enjoying themselves over a glass of cold grog—the gunner taking the watch on deck—the doctor was piping anything but mellifluously on the double flageolet, while the Spanish priest, and aide-de-camp to the general, were playing at chess, and wrangling in bad French. I could hear Mr Treenail rumbling and stumbling in his stateroom, as he accoutred himself in a jacket similar to those of the armed boat’s crew whom I had passed, and presently he stepped into the gunroom, armed also with cutlass and pistol.

  “Mr Cringle, get ready to go in the boat with me, and bring your arms with you.”

  I now knew whereabouts I was, and that my Cork friends were the quarry at which we aimed. I did as I was ordered, and we immediately pulled on shore,
where, leaving two strong fellows in charge of the boat, with instructions to fire their pistols and shove off a couple of boat-lengths should any suspicious circumstance indicating an attack take place, we separated, like a pulk of Cossacks coming to the charge, but without the hourah, with orders to meet before Pat Doolan’s door, as speedily as our legs could carry us. We had landed about a cable’s length to the right of the high precipitous bank—up which we stole in straggling parties—on which that abominable congregation of the most filthy huts ever pig grunted in is situated, called the Holy Ground. Pat Doolan’s domicile was in a little dirty lane, about the middle of the village. Presently ten strapping fellows, including the lieutenant, were before the door, each man with his stretcher in his hand. It was a very tempestuous, although moonlight, night, occasionally clear, with the moonbeams at one moment sparkling brightly in the small ripples on the filthy puddles before the door, and on the gem-like water-drops that hung from the eaves of the thatched roof, and lighting up the dark statue-like figures of the men, and casting their long shadows strongly against the mud wall of the house; at another, a black cloud, as it flew across her disk, cast everything into deep shade; while the only noise we heard was the hoarse dashing of the distant surf, rising and falling on the fitful gusts of the breeze. We tried the door. It was fast.

  “Surround the house, men,” said the lieutenant in a whisper. He rapped loudly. “Pat Doolan, my man, open the door, will ye?” No answer. “If you don’t, we shall make free to break it open, Patrick, dear.”

  All this while the light of a fire, or of candles, streamed through the joints of the door. The threat at length appeared to have the desired effect. A poor decrepit old man undid the bolt and let us in. “Ohon a ree! Ohon a ree! What make you all this boder for—come you to help us to wake poor ould Kate there, and bring you the whisky wid you?”

  “Old man, where is Pat Doolan?” said the lieutenant.

  “Gone to borrow whisky, to wake ould Kate, there;—the howling will begin whenever Mother Doncannon and Misthress Conolly come over from Middle-ton, and I look for dem every minute.”

  There was no vestige of any living thing in the miserable hovel, except the old fellow. On two low trestles, in the middle of the floor, lay a coffin with the lid on, on the top of which was stretched the dead body of an old emaciated woman in her grave-clothes, the quality of which was much finer than one could have expected to have seen in the midst of the surrounding squalidness. The face of the corpse was uncovered, the hands were crossed on the breast, and there was a plate of salt on the stomach.

  An iron cresset, charged with coarse rancid oil, hung from the roof, the dull smoky red light flickering on the dead corpse, as the breeze streamed in through the door and numberless chinks in the walls, making the cold, rigid, sharp features appear to move, and glimmer, and gibber as it were, from the changing shades. Close to the head there was a small door opening into an apartment of some kind, but the coffin was placed so near it that one could not pass between the body and the door.

  “My good man,” said Treenail to the solitary mourner, “I must beg leave to remove the body a bit, and have the goodness to open that door.”

  “Door, yere honour! It’s no door o’ mine and it’s not opening that same that old Phil Carrol shall busy himself wid.”

  “Carline,” said Mr Treenail, quick and sharp, “remove the body.” It was done.

  “Cruel heavy the old dame is, sir, for all her wasted appearance,” said one of the men.

  The lieutenant now ranged the press-gang against the wall fronting the door, and, stepping into the middle of the room, drew his pistol and cocked it. “Messmates,” he sang out, as if addressing the skulkers in the other room, “I know you are here; the house is surrounded—and unless you open that door now, by the powers, but I’ll fire slap into you!” There was a bustle, and a rumbling tumbling noise within. “My lads, we are now sure of our game,” sang out Treenail, with great animation; “sling that clumsy bench there.” He pointed to an oaken form about eight feet long and nearly three inches thick. To produce a two-inch rope, and junk it into three lengths, and rig the battering-ram, was the work of an instant. “One, two, three,”—and bang the door flew open, and there were our men stowed away, each sitting on the top of his bag, as snug as could be, although looking very much like condemned thieves. We bound eight of them, thrusting a stretcher across their backs, under their arms, and, lashing the fins to the same by good stout lanyards, we were proceeding to stump our prisoners off to the boat, when, with the innate devilry that I have inherited, I know not how, but the original sin of which has more than once nearly cost me my life, I said, without addressing my superior officer, or any one else directly, “I should like now to scale my pistol through that coffin. If I miss, I can’t hurt the old woman; and an eyelet hole in that coffin itself will only be an act of civility to the worms.”

  I looked towards my superior officer, who answered me with a knowing shake of the head. I advanced, while all was silent as death—the sharp click of the pistol lock now struck acutely on my own ear. I presented, when—crash—the lid of the coffin, old woman and all, was dashed off in an instant, the corpse flying up in the air, and then falling heavily on the floor, rolling over and over, while a tall handsome fellow, in his striped flannel shirt and blue trousers, with the sweat pouring down over his face in streams, sat up in the shell.

  “All right,” said Mr Treenail; “help him out of his berth.”

  He was pinioned like the rest, and forthwith we walked them all off to the beach. By this time there was an unusual bustle in the Holy Ground, and we could hear many an anathema curses—not loud but deep—ejaculated from many a half-opened door as we passed along. We reached the boat, and time it was we did so, for a number of stout fellows, who had followed us in a gradually increasing crowd until they amounted to forty at the fewest, now nearly surrounded us, and kept closing in. As the last of us jumped into the boat, they made a rush, so that if we had not shoved off with the speed of light, I think it very likely that we should have been overpowered. However, we reached the ship in safety, and the day following we weighed, and stood out to sea with our convoy.

  It was a very large fleet, nearly three hundred sail of merchant vessels—and a noble sight truly.

  A line-of-battle ship led, and two frigates and three sloops of our class were stationed on the outskirts of the fleet, whipping them in, as it were. We made Madeira in fourteen days, looked in, but did not anchor; superb island—magnificent mountains—white town,—and all very fine, but nothing particular happened for three weeks. One fine evening (we had by this time progressed into the trades, and were within three hundred miles of Barbadoes) the sun had set bright and clear, after a most beautiful day, and we were bowling along right before it, rolling like the very devil; but there was no moon, and although the stars sparkled brilliantly, yet it was dark, and as we were the sternmost of the men-of-war, we had the task of whipping in the sluggards. It was my watch on deck. A gun from the commodore, who showed a number of lights. “What is that, Mr Kennedy?” said the captain to the old gunner. “The commodore has made the night-signal for the sternmost ships to make more sail and close, sir.” We repeated the signal and stood on, hailing the dullest of the merchantmen in our neighbourhood to make more sail, and firing a musket-shot now and then over the more distant of them. By-and-by we saw a large West Indiaman suddenly haul her wind and stand across our bows.

  “Forward there!” sung out Mr Splinter; “stand by to fire a shot at that fellow from the boat gun if he does not bear up. What can he be after? Sergeant Armstrong”—to a marine, who was standing close by him in the waist—”get a musket, and fire over him.”

  It was done, and the ship immediately bore up on her course again; we now ranged alongside of him on his larboard quarter.

  “Ho, the ship, ahoy!”—”Hillo!” was the reply. “Make more sail, sir, and run into the body of the fleet, or I shall fire into you: why don’t you, sir, k
eep in the wake of the commodore?” No answer. “What meant you by hauling your wind just now, sir?”

  “Yesh, yesh,” at length responded a voice from the merchantman.

  “Something wrong here,” said Mr Splinter. “Back your maintopsail, sir, and hoist a light at the peak; I shall send a boat on board of you. Boatswain’s mate, pipe away the crew of the jolly-boat.” We also hove to, and were in the act of lowering down the boat, when the officer rattled out—”Keep all fast with the boat; I can’t comprehend that chap’s manoeuvres for the soul of me. He has not hove to.” Once more we were within pistol-shot of him. “Why don’t you heave to, sir? “ All silent.

  Presently we could perceive a confusion and noise of struggling on board, and angry voices, as if people were trying to force their way up the hatches from below; and a heavy thumping on the deck, and a creaking of the blocks, and rattling of the cordage, while the mainyard was first braced one way, and then another, as if two parties were striving for the mastery. At length a voice hailed distinctly—”we are captured by a ———.” A sudden sharp cry, and a splash overboard, told of some fearful deed.

  “We are taken by a privateer or pirate,” sung out another voice. This was followed by a heavy crunching blow, as when the spike of a butcher’s axe is driven through a bullock’s forehead deep into the brain.

  By this time all hands had been called, and the word had been passed to clear away two of the foremost carronades on the starboard side, and to load them with grape.

  “On board there—get below, all you of the English crew, as I shall fire with grape,” sung out the captain.

  The hint was now taken. The ship at length came to the wind—we rounded to, under her lee—and an armed boat, with Mr Treenail, and myself, and sixteen men, with cutlasses, were sent on board.

  We jumped on deck, and at the gangway Mr Treenail stumbled and fell over the dead body of a man, no doubt the one who had hailed, last, with his skull cloven to the eyes, and a broken cutlass-blade sticking in the gash. We were immediately accosted by the mate, who was lashed down to a ring-bolt close by the bits, with his hands tied at the wrists by sharp cords, so tightly that the blood was spouting from beneath his nails.