Tom Cringle's Log

by Michael Scott

  One of them, the head bookkeeper, as he was called, appeared literally roasted by the intensity of the sun’s rays.

  “How is Baldy Steer?” said the overseer to this person.

  “Better to-day, sir,—I drenched him with train-oil and sulphur.”

  “The devil you did,” thought I. “Alas! for Baldy.”

  “And Mary, and Caroline, and the rest of that lot?”

  “Are sent to Perkins’s Red Rover, sir; but I believe some of them are in calf already by Bullfinch—and I have cut Peter for the lampas.”

  The knife and fork dropped from my hands. “What can all this mean? is this their boasted kindness to their slaves? One of a family drenched with train-oil and brimstone, another cut for some horrible complaint never heard of before, called lampas, and the females sent to the Red Rover, some being in calf already!” But I soon perceived that the baked man was the cow-boy or shepherd of the estate, making his report of the casualties amongst his bullocks, mules, and heifers.

  “Juliet Ridge will not yield, sir,” quoth another.

  “Who is this, next? a stubborn concern she must be.”

  “The liquor is very poor.” Here he helped himself to rum and water, the rum coming up about an inch in the glass, regular half-and-half, fit to float a marlinspike.

  “It is more than yours is,” thought I; and I again stared in wonderment, until I perceived he spoke of the juice of a cane patch.

  At this time a tall, lathy gentleman came in, wearing a most original cut coatee. He was a most extraordinary built man; he had absolutely no body, his bottom being placed between his shoulders; but what was wanted in corpus was made up in legs; indeed he looked like a pair of compasses, buttoned together at the shoulders, and supporting a yellow phiz half a yard long, thatched with a fell of sandy hair, falling down lank and greasy on each side of his face. Fyall called him Buckskin, which, with some other circumstances, made me guess that he was neither more nor less than an American smuggler.

  After supper, a glass of punch was filled for each person; the overseer gave a rap on the table with his knuckles, and off started the bookkeepers like shots out of shovels, leaving the Yankee, Mr Fyall, the overseer, and myself, at table.

  I was very tired, and reckoned on going to bed now—but no such thing. Fyall ordered Jupiter to bring a case from his gigbox, containing some capital brandy. A new brewage of punch took place, and I found about the small hours that we were all verging fast towards drunkenness, or something very like that same. The Yankee was specially plied by Fyall, evidently with an object, and he soon succeeded in making him helplessly drunk.

  The fun now “grew fast and furious,”—a large wash-tub was ordered in, placed under a beam at the corner of the room, and filled with water; a sack and a three-inch rope were then called for, and promptly produced by the blackies, who, apparently accustomed to Fyall’s pranks, grinned with delight. Buckskin was thrust into the sack, feet foremost; the mouth of it was then gathered round his throat with a string and I was set to splice a bight in the rope, so as to fit under his arms without running, which might have choked him. All things being prepared, the slack end was thrown over the beam. He was soused in the tub, the word was given to hoist away, and we ran him up to the roof, and then belayed the rope round the body of the overseer, who was able to sit on his chair, and that was all. The cold bath, and the being hung up to dry, speedily sobered the American, but his arms being within the sack, he could do nothing for his own emancipation: he kept swearing, however, and entreating, and dancing with rage, every jerk drawing the cord tighter round the waist of the overseer who, unaware of his situation, thought himself bewitched as he was drawn with violence by starts along the floor, with the chair as it were glued to him. At length the patient extricated one of his arms, and laying hold of the beam above him, drew himself up, and then letting go his hold suddenly, fairly lifted the drunken overseer, chair and all, several feet from the ground, so as to bring them on a level with himself, and then, in mid air, began to pummel his counterpoise with right goodwill. At length, fearful of the consequences from the fury into which the man had worked himself, Fyall and I dashed out the candles and fled to our rooms, where, after barricading the doors, we shouted to the servants to let the gentlemen down.

  The next morning had been fixed for duck-shooting, and the overseer and I were creeping along amongst the mangrove bushes on the shore to get a shot at some teal, when we saw our friend, the pair of compasses, crossing the small bay in his boat, towards his little pilot-boat-built schooner, which was moored in a small creek opposite, the brushwood concealing everything but her masts. My companion, as wild an Irishman as I ever knew, hailed him.

  “Hillo, Obediah—Buckskin—you Yankee rascal, heave to. Come ashore here—come ashore.”

  Obed, smoking his pipe, deliberately uncoiled himself—I thought as he rose there was to be no end of him—and stood upright in the boat like an ill-rigged jurymast.

  “I say, Master Tummas, you ben’t no friend of mine, I guess, a’ter last night’s work; you hears how I coughs?” and he began to wheezle and crow in a most remarkable fashion.

  “Never mind,” rejoined the overseer;” if you go round that point, and put up the ducks—by the piper, but I’ll fire at you!”

  Obed neighed like a horse expecting his oats, which was meant as a laugh of derision. “Do you think your birding-piece can touch me here away, Master Tummas?” and again he nichered more loudly than before.

  “Don’t provoke me to try, you yellow snake you!”

  “Try, and be d——d, and there’s a mark for thee,” unveiling a certain part of his body.

  The overseer, or busha, to give him his Jamaica name, looked at me and smiled, then coolly lifted his long Spanish barrel and fired. Down dropped the smuggler, and ashore came the boat.

  “I am mortally wounded, Master Tummas,” quoth Obed; and I was confoundedly frightened at first, from the unusual proximity of the injured part to his head; but the overseer, as soon as he could get off the ground, where he had thrown himself in an uncontrollable fit of laughter, had the man stripped and laid across a log, where he set his servant to pick out the pellets with a penknife.

  Next night I was awakened out of my first sleep by a peculiar sort of tap, tap, on the floor, as if a cat with walnut shells had been moving about the room. The feline race, in all its varieties, is my detestation, so I slipped out of bed to expel the intruder; but the instant my toe touched the ground, it was seized as if by a smith’s forceps. I drew it into bed, but the annoyance followed it; and in an agony of alarm and pain I thrust my hand down, when my thumb was instantly manacled to the other suffering member. I now lost my wits altogether, and roared murder, which brought a servant in with a light, and there I was, thumb and toe, in the clinch of a land-crab.

  I had been exceedingly struck with the beauty of the negro villages on the old-settled estates, which are usually situated in the most picturesque spots, and I determined to visit the one which lay on a sunny bank full in view from my window, divided on two sides from the cane pieces by a precipitous ravine, and on the other two by a high logwood hedge, so like hawthorn that I could scarcely tell the difference, even when close to it.

  At a distance it had the appearance of one entire orchard of fruit-trees, where were mingled together the pyramidal orange, in fruit and in flower, the former in all its stages, from green to dropping ripe,—the citron, lemon, and lime-trees, the stately, glossy-leaved star-apple, the golden shaddock and grape-fruit, with their slender branches bending under their ponderous yellow fruit,—the cashew, with its apple like that of the cities of the plain, fair to look at, but acrid to the taste, to which the far-famed nut is appended like a bud,— the avocada, with its Brobdignag pear as large as a purser’s lantern,—the bread-fruit, with a leaf, one of which would have covered Adam like a bishop’s apron, and a fruit, for all the world, in size and shape, like a blackamoor’s head; while for underwood you had the green, fresh, dew-spang
led plantain, round which, in the hottest day, there is always a halo of coolness,—the coco root, the yam, and granadillo, with their long vines twining up the neighbouring trees and shrubs like hop-tendrils,—and pease and beans, in all their endless variety of blossom and of odour, from the Lima bean, with a stalk as thick as my arm, to the mouse pea, three inches high—the pine-apple, literally growing in, and constituting, with its prickly leaves, part of the hedgerows,—the custard-apple, like russet-bags of cold pudding,—the cocoa and coffee bushes, and the devil knows what all that is delightful in nature besides; while aloft, the tall graceful cocoa-nut, the majestic palm, and the gigantic wild cotton-tree, shot up here and there like minarets far above the rest, high into the blue heavens.

  I entered one of the narrow winding footpaths, where an immense variety of convolvuli crept along the penguin fences, disclosing their delicate flowers in the morning freshness (all that class here shut shop at noon), and passion flowers of all sizes, from a soup-plate to a thumb-ring.

  The huts were substantially thatched with palm-leaves, and the walls woven with a basket-work of twigs, plastered over with clay, and whitewashed—the floors were of baked clay, dry and comfortable. They all consisted of a hall and a sleeping-room off each side of it: in many of the former I noticed mahogany sideboards and chairs, and glass decanters, while a whole lot of African drums and flutes, and sometimes a good gun, hung from the rafters; and it would have gladdened an Irishman’s heart to have seen the adjoining piggeries. Before one of the houses an old woman was taking care of a dozen black infants, little, naked, glossy, black guinea-pigs, with party-coloured beads tied round their loins, each squatted like a little Indian pagod in the middle of a large wooden bowl, to keep it off the damp ground.

  While I was pursuing my ramble, a large conch-shell was blown at the overseer’s house, and the different gangs turned in to dinner; they came along dancing and shouting, and playing tricks on each other in the little paths, in all the happy anticipation of a good dinner, and an hour and a-half to eat it in, the men well clad in Osnaburg frocks and trousers, and the women in baize petticoats and Osnaburg shifts, with a neat printed calico short-gown over all.

  “And these are slaves,” thought I, “and this is West Indian bondage! Oh that some of my well-meaning anti-slavery friends were here, to judge from the evidence of their own senses!”

  The following night there was to be a grand play or wake in the negro houses over the head cooper, who had died in the morning, and I determined to be present at it, although the overseer tried to dissuade me, saying that no white person ever broke in on these orgies; that the negroes were very averse to their doing so; and that neither he, nor any of the white people on the estate, had ever been present on such an occasion. This very interdict excited my curiosity still more; so I rose about midnight, and let myself gently down through the window, and shaped my course in the direction of the negro houses, guided by a loud drumming, which, as I came nearer, every now and then sank into a low murmuring roll, when a strong bass voice would burst forth into a wild recitative; to which succeeded a loud piercing chorus of female voices, during which the drums were beaten with great vehemence; this was succeeded by another solo, and so on. There was no moon, and I had to thread my way along one of the winding footpaths by star-light. When I arrived within a stone-cast of the hut before which the play was being held, I left the beaten track, and crept onwards until I gained the shelter of the stem of a wild cotton-tree, behind which I skulked unseen.

  The scene was wild enough. Before the door a circle was formed by about twenty women, all in their best clothes, sitting on the ground, and swaying their bodies to and fro, while they sang in chorus the wild dirge already mentioned, the words of which I could not make out; in the centre of the circle sat four men playing on gumbies, or the long drum formerly described, while a fifth stood behind them with a conch-shell, which he kept sounding at intervals. Other three negroes kept circling round the outer verge of the circle of women, naked all to their waist-cloths spinning about and about with their hands above their heads, like so many dancing dervishes. It was one of these three that from time to time took up the recitative, the female chorus breaking in after each line. Close to the drummers lay the body in an open coffin, supported on two low stools or trestles; a piece of flaming resinous wood was stuck in the ground at the head, and another at the feet; and a lump of kneaded clay, in which another torch-like splinter was fixed, rested on the breast. An old man, naked like the solo singer, was digging a grave close to where the body lay. The following was the chant:—

  “I say, broder, you can’t go yet.”

  THEN THE CHORUS OF FEMALE VOICES.

  “When do morning star rise, den we put you in a hole.”

  CHORUS AGAIN.

  “Den you go in a Africa, you see Fetish dere.”

  CHORUS.

  “You shall nyam goat dere, wid all your family.”

  CHORUS

  “Buccra can’t come dere; say, dam rascal, why you no work?”

  CHORUS.

  “Buccra can’t catch Duppy. * no, no.”

  CHORUS

  Three calabashes, or gourds, with pork, yams, and rum, were placed on a small bench that stood close to the head of the bier, and at right angles to it.

  In a little while, the women, singing-men, and drummers, suddenly gave a loud shout, or rather yell, clapped their hands three times, and then rushed into the surrounding cottages, leaving the old grave-digger alone with the body.

  He had completed the grave, and had squatted himself on his hams beside the coffin, swinging his body as the women had done, and uttering a low moaning sound, frequently ending in a loud pech, like that of a pavior when he brings down his rammer.

  I noticed he kept looking towards the east, watching, as I conjectured, the first appearance of the morning star, but it was as yet too early.

  He lifted the gourd with the pork, and took a large mouthful.

  “How is dis! I can’t put dis meat in Quacco’s coffin, dere is salt in de pork; Duppy can’t bear salt,” another large mouthful—”Duppy hate salt too much,” —here he ate it all up, and placed the empty gourd in the coffin. He then took up the one with boiled yam in it, and tasted it also.

  “Salt here too—who de debil do such a ting?—must not let Duppy taste dat.” He discussed this also, placing the empty vessel in the coffin, as he had done with the other. He then came to the calabash with the rum. There is no salt here, thought I.

  “Rum! ah, Duppy love rum—if it be well strong, let me see—Massa Niger, who put water in dis rum, eh? Duppy will never touch dat”—a long pull—”no, no, never touch dat.” Here he finished the whole, and placed the empty vessel beside the others; then gradually sank back on his hams with his mouth open, and his eyes starting from the sockets, as he peered up into the tree, apparently at some terrible object. I looked up also, and saw a large yellow snake, nearly ten feet long, let itself gradually down directly over the coffin, between me and the bright glare (the outline of its glossy mottled skin glancing in the strong light, which gave its dark opaque body the appearance of being edged with flame, and its glittering tongue, that of a red-hot wire), with its tail round a limb of the cotton-tree, until its head reached within an inch of the dead man’s face, which it licked with its long forked tongue, uttering a loud hissing noise.

  I was fascinated with terror, and could not move a muscle; at length the creature slowly swung itself up again, and disappeared amongst the branches.

  Quashie gained courage, as the rum began to operate, and the snake to disappear. “Come to catch Quacco’s Duppy, before him get to Africa, sure as can be. De metody parson say de debil old sarpant—dat must be old sarpant, for I never see so big one, so it must be de debil.”

  He caught a glimpse of my face at this moment; it seemed that I had no powers of fascination like the snake, for he roared out, “Murder, murder, de debil, de debil, first like a sarpant, den like himself; see him white face be
hind de tree; see him white face behind de tree;” and then, in the extremity of his fear, he popped, head foremost, into the grave, leaving his quivering legs and feet sticking upwards, as if he had been planted by the head, like a forked parsnip reversed.

  At this uproar, a number of negroes ran out of the nearest houses, and, to my surprise, four white seamen appeared suddenly amongst them, who, the moment they got sight of my uniform, as I ran away, gave chase, and having overtaken me, as I stumbled in the dark path, immediately pinioned me. They were all armed, and I had no doubt were part of the crew of the smuggling schooner, and that they had a depot amongst the negro houses.

  “Yo ho, my hearty, heave-to, or here goes with a brace of bullets.”

  I told them who I was, and that curiosity alone brought me there.

  “Gammon, tell that to the marines; you’re a spy, messmate, and on board you go with us, so sure as I be Paul Brandywine.”

  Here was a change with a vengeance. An hour before I was surrounded by friends, and resting comfortably in my warm bed, and now I was a prisoner to a set of brigands, who were smugglers at the best, and what might they not be at the worst? I had no chance of escape by any sudden effort of strength or activity, for a piece of a handspike had been thrust across my back, passing under both of my arms, which were tightly lashed to it, as if I had been trussed for roasting, so that I could no more run, with a chance of escape, than a goose without her pinions. After we left the negro houses, I perceived, with some surprise, that my captors kept the beaten track, leading directly to, and passed the overseer’s dwelling. “Come, here is a chance, at all events,” argued I to myself. “If I got within hail, I will alarm the lieges, if a deuced good pipe don’t fail me.”