Tom Cringle's Log

by Michael Scott

  But—as if the whole city had been tom-fooling—a loud burst of military music was now heard, and the north end of the street we were ascending— which leads out of the Place d’Armes, or parade, that occupies the centre of the town—was filled with a cloud of dust that rose as high as the house-tops, through which the head of a column of troops sparkled—swords and bayonets and gay uniforms glancing in the sun. This was the Kingston regiment marching down to the court-house, in the lower part of the town, to mount the Christmas guards, which is always carefully attended to, in case any of the John Canoes should take a small fancy to burn or pillage the town, or to rise and cut the throats of their masters, or any little innocent recreation of the kind, out of compliment to Dr Lushington or Messrs Macaulay and Babington.

  First came a tolerably good band, a little too drummy, but still not amiss— well dressed, only the performers, being of all colours, from white down to jet-black, had a curious hodgepodge or piebald appearance. Then came a dozen mounted officers, at the very least—colonels-in-chief, and colonels, and lieutenant-colonels, and majors—all very fine, and very bad horsemen. Then the grenadier company, composed of white clerks of the place—very fine-looking young men indeed; another white company followed, not quite so smart-looking; then came a century of the children of Israel, not over-military in appearance—the days of Joshua the son of Nun had passed away, the glory had long departed from their house; a phalanx of light browns succeeded, then a company of dark browns, or mulattoes—the regular half-and-half in this, as well as in grog, is the best mixture after all; then quashie himself, or a company of free blacks, who, with the browns, seemed the best soldiers of the set, excepting the flank companies; and after blackie the battalion again gradually whitened away, until it ended in a very fine light company of buccras, smart young fellows as need be; all the officers were white, and all the soldiers, whatever their cast or colour, free of course. Another battalion succeeded, composed in the same way; and really I was agreeably surprised to find the indigenous force of the colony so efficient. I had never seen anything more soldier-like amongst our volunteers at home. Presently a halt was called, and a mounted officer, evidently desirous of showing off, galloped up to where we were standing, and began to swear at the drivers of a waggon, with a long team of sixteen bullocks, who had placed their vehicle—whether intentionally or not I could not tell—directly across the street, where, being met by another waggon of the same kind coming through the opposite lane, a regular jam had taken place, as they had contrived—being redolent of new rum—to lock their wheels, and twist their lines of bullocks together, in much-admired confusion.

  “Out of the way, sir; out of the way, you black rascals—don’t you see the regiment coming?”

  The men spanked their long whips and shouted to the steers by name— “Back, back—Caesar—Antony—Crab, back, sir, back;” and they whistled loud and long, but Caesar and the rest only became more and more involved.

  “Order arms!” roared another officer, fairly beaten by the bullocks and waggons—”Stand at ease!”

  On this last signal a whole cloud of spruce-beer sellers started fiercely from under the piazzas.

  “An insurrection of the slave-population, mayhap,” thought I; but their object was a very peaceable one, for presently, I verily believe, every man and officer in the regiment had a tumbler of this, to me, most delicious beverage at his head; the drawing of the corks was more like street-firing than anything else—a regular feu de joie. In the mean time a council of war seemed to be holden by the mounted officers as to how the obstacle in front was to be overcome; but at this moment confusion became worse confounded, by the approach of what I concluded to be the white man’s John Canoe party, mounted, by way of pre-eminence. First came a trumpeter, John Canoe with a black face, which was all in rule, as his black counterparts wore white ones; but his Device, a curious little old man, dressed in a sort of blue uniform, and mounted on the skeleton, or ghost, of a gig-horse, I could make nothing of. It carried a drawn sword in its hand, with which it made various flourishes, at each one of which I trembled for its Rosinante’s ears. The Device was followed by about fifty other odd-looking creatures, all on horseback; but they had no more seat than so many pairs of tongs, which in truth they greatly resembled, and made no show and less fun. So we were wishing them out of the way, when some one whispered that the Kingston Light-Horse mustered strong this morning. I found afterwards that every man who kept a good horse, or could ride, invariably served in the foot—all free persons must join some corps or other; so that the troop, as it was called, was composed exclusively of those who could not ride, and who kept no saddle-horses.

  The line was now formed, and after a variety of cumbrous manoeuvres out of Dundas—sixteen at the least—the regiment was countermarched and filed along another street, where they gave three cheers, in honour of their having had a drink of spruce, and of having circumvented the bullocks and waggons. A little farther on we encountered four beautiful nine-pounder field-pieces, each lumbering along, drawn by half-a-dozen mules, and accompanied by three or four negroes, but with no escort whatsoever.

  “I say, Quashie, where are all the bombardiers, the artillery-men?”

  “Oh, massa, dem all gone to drink pruce—”

  “What, more spruce!—spruce—nothing but spruce!” quoth I.

  “Oh, yes, massa; after dem drink pruce done dem all go to him breakfast, massa—left we for take de gun one feepenny, massa”—as the price of the information, I suppose.

  “Are the guns loaded?” said I.

  “Me no sabe, massa—top, I shall see.” And the fellow to whom I addressed myself stepped forward and began to squint into the muzzle of one of the field-pieces, slewing his head from side to side, with absurd gravity, like a magpie peeping into a marrow-bone. “Him most be load—no daylight come troo de touch-hole—take care—make me try him.” And without more ado he shook out the red embers from his pipe right on the touch-hole of the gun, when the fragment of a broken tube spun up in a small jet of flame, that made me start and jump back.

  “How dare you, you scoundrel!” said the captain.

  “Eigh, massa, him no hax me to see if him be load—so I was try see. Indeed, I tink him is load after all yet.”

  He stepped forward, and entered his rammer into the cannon, after an unavailing attempt to blow with his blubber-lips through the touch-hole.

  Noticing that it did not produce the ringing sound it would have done in an empty gun, but went home with a soft thud, I sang out, “Stand clear, sir.—By Jupiter, the gun is loaded.”

  The negro continued to bash at it with all his might.

  Meanwhile the fellow who was driving the mules attached to the field-piece turned his head, and saw what was going on. In a trice he snatched up another rammer and, without any warning, came crack over the fellow’s cranium, to whom we had been speaking, as hard as he could draw, making the instrument quiver again.

  “Dem you, ye, ye Jericho! all, so you bash my brokefast, eh? You no see me tick him into de gun before we yoke de mule, dem, eh?—You tief you, eh?”

  “No!” roared the other—”you Walkandnyam, you hab no brokefast, you liard—at least I never see him.”

  “Big lie dat!” replied Walkandnyam—”look in de gun.”

  Jericho peered into it again.

  “Dere, you son of a———” (I shan’t say what)—”dere, I see de red flannin wadding over de cartridge—Your brokefast!—you be hang!” roared Jericho.

  And he made at him as if he would have eaten him alive.

  “You be hang youshef!” shrieked Walkandnyam—”and de red wadding be hang?” as he took a screw, and hooked out, not a cartridge, certainly, but his own nightcap, full of yams and salt-fish smashed into a paste by Jericho’s rammer.

  In the frenzy of his rage he dashed this into his opponent’s face, and they both stripped in a second. Separating several yards, they levelled their heads like two telescopes on stands, and ran butt a
t each other like ram-goats, and quite as odoriferous, making the welkin ring again as their flint-hard skulls cracked together. Finding each other invulnerable in this direction, they closed, and began scrambling and biting and kicking, and tumbling over and over in the sand; while the skipper and I stood by cheering them on, and nearly suffocated with laughter. They never once struck with their closed fists, I noticed; so they were not much hurt. It was great cry and little wool; and at length they got tired, and hauled off by mutual consent, finishing off as usual with an appeal to us—”Beg one feepenny, massa!”

  At six o’clock we drove to Mr Pepperpot Wagtail’s. The party was a bachelor’s one, and when we walked up the front steps, there was our host in person, standing to receive us at the door, while on each side of him there were five or six of his visitors, all sitting with their legs cocked up, their feet resting on a sort of surbase, above which the jealousies, or movable blinds of the piazza, were fixed.

  I was introduced to the whole party seriatim—and as each of the cock-legs dropped his trams, he started up. caught hold of my hand, and wrung it as if I had been his dearest and oldest friend.

  Were I to designate Jamaica as a community, I would call it a hand-shaking people. I have often laughed heartily upon seeing two cronies meeting in the streets of Kingston after a temporary separation; when about pistol-shot asunder, both would begin to tug and rug at the right-hand glove, but it is frequently a mighty serious affair, in that hissing hot climate, to get the gauntlet off; they approach,—one, a smart urbane little man who would not disgrace St James’s Street, being more kiln-dried and less moist in his corporeals than his country friend, has contrived to extract his paw, and holds it out in act to shake.

  “Ah! how do you do, Ratoon?” quoth the Kingston man.

  “Quite well, Shingle,” rejoins the gloved, a stout, red-faced, sudoriferous, yam-fed planter, dressed in blue-white jean trousers and waistcoat, with long Hessian boots drawn up to his knee over the former, and a span-new square-skirted blue coatee, with lots of clear brass buttons; a broad-brimmed black silk hat, worn white at the edge of the crown—wearing a very small neckcloth, above which shoots up an enormous shirt-collar, the peaks of which might serve for winkers to a starting horse, and carrying a large whip in his hand— “Quite well, my dear fellow,” while he persists in dragging at it—the other homo all the while standing in the absurd position of a finger-post. At length, off comes the glove—piecemeal perhaps—a finger first, for instance,—then a thumb; at length they tackle to, and shake each other like the very devil—not a sober, pump-handle shake, but a regular jiggery jiggery, as if they were trying to dislocate each other’s arm; and, confound them! even then they don’t let go—they cling like sucker-fish, and talk and wallop about, and throw themselves back and laugh, and then another jiggery.

  On horseback, this custom is conspicuously ridiculous. I have nearly gone into fits at beholding two men careering along the road at a hand-gallop, each on a goodish horse, with his negro boy astern of him on a mule, in clean frock and trousers and smart glazed hat with broad gold band, and massa’s umbrella in a leathern case slung across his shoulders, and his portmanteau behind him on a mail pillion covered with a snow-white sheep’s fleece—suddenly they pull up on recognising each other, when, tucking their whips under their arms, or crossing them in their teeth, it may be, they commence the rugging and riving operation. In this case—Shingle’s bit of blood swerves, we may assume—Ratoon rides at him—Shingle fairly turns tail, and starts out at full speed, Ratoon thundering in his rear, with outstretched arm; and it does happen, I am assured, that the hot pursuit often continues for a mile before the desired clapperclaw is obtained. But when two lusty planters meet on horseback, then indeed Greek meets Greek. They begin the interview by shouting to each other while fifty yards off, pulling away at the gloves all the while—”How are you, Canetop?—glad to see you, Canetop. How do you do, I hope.”—”How are you, Yamfu, my dear fellow?” their horses fretting and jumping all the time; and if the Jack Spaniards or gadflies be rife, they have, even when denuded for the shake, to spur at each other, more like a Knight Templar and a Saracen charging in mortal combat than two men merely struggling to be civil; and after all they have often to get their black servants alongside to hold their horses, for shake they must, were they to break their necks in the attempt. Why they won’t shake hands with their gloves on, I am sure I can’t tell. It would be much cooler and nicer—lots of Scotchmen in the community too.

  This hand-shaking, however, was followed by an invitation to dinner from each individual in the company. I looked to Captain Transom, as much as to say, “Can they mean us to take them at their word?” He nodded.

  “We are sorry that, being under orders to go to sea on Sunday morning, neither Mr Cringle nor myself can have the pleasure of accepting such kind invitations.”

  “Well, when you come back, you know—one day you must give me.”

  “And I won’t be denied,” quoth a second.

  “Liberty Hall, you know, so to me you must come, no ceremony,” said a third—and so on.

  At length, no less a man drove up to the door than Judge ———. When he drew up, his servant, who was sitting behind, on a small projection of the ketureen, came round and took a parcel out of the gig, closely wrapped in a blanket—”Bring that carefully in, Leonidas,” said the judge, who now stumped up stairs with a small saw in his hand. He received the parcel, and, laying it down carefully in a corner, he placed the saw on it, and then came up and shook hands with Wagtail, and made his bow very gracefully.

  “What!—can’t you do without your ice and sour claret yet?” said Wagtail.

  “Never mind, never mind,” said the judge, and here dinner being announced, we all adjourned to the dining-room, where a very splendid entertainment was set out, to which we set to, and in the end, as it will appear, did the utmost justice to it.

  The wines were most exquisite. Madeira, for instance, never can be drank in perfection anywhere out of the tropics. You may have the wine as good at home, although I doubt it, but then you have not the climate to drink it in. I would say the same of most of the delicate French wines—that is, those that will stand the voyage—burgundy of course, not included; but never mind, let us get along.

  All the decanters were covered with cotton bags, kept wet with saltpetre and water, so that the evaporation carried on powerfully by the stream of air that flowed across the room, through the open doors and windows, made the fluids quite as cool as was desirable to worthies sitting luxuriating with the thermometer at 80 degrees or thereby; yet, from the free current, I was in no way made aware of this degree of heat by any oppressive sensation; and I found in the West Indies, as well as in the East, although the wind in the latter is more dry and parching, that a current of heated air, if it be moderately dry even with the thermometer at 95° in the shade, is really not so enervating or oppressive as I have found it in the stagnating atmosphere on the sunny side of Pall-Mall, with the mercury barely at 75°. A cargo of ice had a little before this arrived at Kingston, and at first all the inhabitants who could afford it iced everything, wine, water, cold meats, fruits, and the Lord knows what all—tea, I believe amongst other things (by the way, I have tried this, and it is a luxury of its kind); but the regular old stagers, who knew what was what, and had a regard for their interiors, soon began to eschew the ice in every way, saving and excepting to cool the water they washed their thin faces and hands in; so we had no ice, nor did we miss it; but the judge had a plateful of chips on the table before him, one of which he every now and then popped into his long thin bell-glass of claret, diluting it, I should have thought, in rather a heathenish manner; but n’importe, he worked away, sawing off pieces now and then from the large lump in the blanket (to save the tear and wear attending a fracture), which was handed to him by his servant, so that by eleven o’clock at night, allowing for the water, he must have concealed his three bottles of pure claret, besides garnishing with a l
ot of white wines. In fine, we all carried on astonishingly, some good singing was given, a practical joke was tried on now and then by Fyall, and we continued mighty happy. As to the singing part of it, the landlord, with a bad voice and worse ear, opened the rorytory by volunteering a very extraordinary squeak; fortunately it was not very long, but it gave him a plea to screw a song out of his right-hand neighbour, who in turn acquired the same right of compelling the person next him to make a fool of himself; at last it came to Transom, who, by the by, sung exceedingly well, but he had got more wine than usual, and essayed the coquette a bit.

  “Bring the wet nightcap!” quoth our host.

  “Oh, is it that you are at?” said Transom, and he sang as required; but it was all pearls before swine, I fear.

  At last we stuck fast at Fyall. Music! there was not one particle in his whole composition; so the wet nightcap already impended over him, when I sang out, “Let him tell a story, Mr Wagtail. Let him tell a story.”

  “Thank you, Tom,” said Fyall; “I owe you a good turn for that, my boy.”

  “Fyall’s story—Mr Fyall’s story!” resounded on all hands. Fyall, glad to escape the song and wet nightcap, instantly began.

  “Why, my friends, you all know Isaac Grimm, the Jew snuff-merchant and cigar-maker, in Harbour Street. Well, Isaac had a brother, Ezekiel by name, who carried on business at Curaçoa; you may have heard of him too. Ezekiel was often down here for the purpose of laying in provisions and purchasing dry goods. You all know that?”

  “Certainly!” shouted both Captain Transom and myself in a breath, although we had never heard of him before.

  “Hah, I knew it! Well then, Ezekiel was very rich; he came down in August last in the Pickle schooner, and, as bad luck would have it, he fell sick of the fever. ‘Isaac,’ quoth Ezekiel, ‘I am wery sheek; I tink I shall tie.’—’Hope note, dear proder; you hab no vife, nor shildir; pity you should tie, Ezekiel. Ave you make your vill, Ezekiel?’—’Yesh; de vill is make. I leavish everyting to you, Isaac, on von condition, dat you send my pody to be bury in Curaçoa. I love dat place; twenty years since I left de Minories, all dat time I cheat dere, and tell lie dere, and lif dere happily. Oh, you most sent my pody for its puryment to Curaçoa!’—’I will do dat, mine proder.’—’Den I depart in peace, dear Isaac;’ and the Israelite was as good as his word for once. He did die. Isaac, according to his promise, applied to the captains of several schooners; none of them would take the dead body. ‘What shall I do?’ I thought Isaac, ‘de monish mosh not be loss.’ So he straightway had Ezekiel (for even a Jew won’t keep long in that climate) cut up and packed with pickle into two barrels, marked ‘Prime mess pork, Leicester, M’Call, and Co., Cork.’ He then shipped the same in the Fan Fan, taking bills of lading in accordance with the brand, deliverable to Mordecai Levi of Curaçoa, to whom he sent the requisite instructions. The vessel sailed—off St Domingo she carried away a mast—tried to fetch Carthagena under a jury-spar—fell to leeward, and finally brought up at Honduras.