Tom Cringle's Log

by Michael Scott

  “It is the hour when from the boughs

  The nightingale’s high note is heard;

  It is the hour when lovers’ vows

  Seem sweet in every whispered word;

  And gentle winds and waters near,

  Make music to the lonely ear.

  Each flower the dews have lightly wet,

  And in the sky the stars are met,

  And on the wave is deeper blue,

  And on the leaf is browner hue,

  And in the heaven that clear obscure,

  So softly dark, and darkly pure,

  Which follows the decline of day,

  When twilight melts beneath the moon away.”

  “Well recited, skipper,” shouted Bang. “Given as the noble poet’s verses should be given. I did not know the extent of your accomplishments; grown poetical ever since you saw Francesca Cangrejo, eh?”

  The darkness hid the gallant captain’s blushes, if blush he did.

  “I say, Don Ricardo, who are those?”—half-a-dozen well-clad negroes had approached the house by this time.

  “Ask them, Mr Bang; take your friend Mr Cringle for an interpreter.”

  “Well, I will. Tom, who are they? Ask them—do.”

  I put the question, “Do you belong to the property?”

  The foremost, a handsome negro, answered me, “No, we don’t, sir; at least, not till to-morrow.”

  “Not till to-morrow?”

  “No, sir; sòmos caballeros hoy” (we are gentlemen to-day).

  Gentlemen to-day! and, pray, what shall you be tomorrow?”

  “Esclavos otra ves” (slaves again, sir), rejoined the poor fellow, nowise daunted.

  “And you, my darling,” said I to a nice well-dressed girl, who seemed to be the sister of the spokesman, “what are you to-day, may I ask?”

  She laughed—”Esclava, a slave to-day, but to-morrow I shall be free.”

  “Very strange.”

  “Not at all, seòor; there are six of us in a family, and one of us is free each day, all to father there,” pointing to an old grey-headed negro, who stood by, leaning on his staff—”he is free two days in the week; and as I am going to have a child,”—a cool admission,—”I want to buy another day for myself too; but Don Ricardo will tell you all about it.”

  The Don by this time chimed in, talking kindly to the poor creatures; but we had to retire, as dinner was now announced, to which we sat down.

  Don Ricardo had been altogether Spanish in Santiago, because be lived there amongst Spaniards, and everything was Spanish about him; so with the tact of his countrymen he had gradually merged into the society in which he moved, and, having married a very high-caste Spanish lady, he at length became regularly amalgamated with the community. But here, in his mountain retreat, sole master, his slaves in attendance on him, he was once more an Englishman in externals, as he always was at heart, and Richie Cloche, from the Lang Toun of Kirkcaldy, shone forth in all his glory as the kind-hearted landlord. His head household servant was an English, or rather a Jamaica negro; his equipment, so far as the dinner set out was concerned, was pure English; he would not even speak anything but English himself.

  The entertainment was exceedingly good,—the only thing that puzzled us uninitiated subjects was a fricassee of Macaca worms, that is, the worm which breeds in the rotten trunk of the cotton-tree, a beautiful little insect, as big as a miller’s thumb, with a white trunk and a black head—in one word, a gigantic caterpillar.

  Bang fed thereon—he had been accustomed to it in Jamaica in some Creole families where he visited, he said—but it was beyond my compass. However, all this while we were having a great deal of fun, when Señora Campana addressed her husband—”My dear, you are now in your English mood, so I suppose we must go.” We had dined at six, and it might now be about eight. Don Ricardo, with all the complacency in the world, bowed, as much as to say, “You are right, my dear, you may go,” when his youngest niece addressed him.

  “Tio—my uncle,” said she, in a low silver-toned voice, “Juana and I have brought our guitars—”

  “Not another word to be said,” quoth Transom—”the guitars by all means.”

  The girls in an instant, without any preparatory blushing, or other botheration, rose, slipped their heads and right arms through the black ribbons that supported their instruments, and stepped into the middle of the room.

  “‘The Moorish Maid of Granada,’” said Señora Campana. They nodded.

  “You shall take Fernando the sailor’s part,” said Señora Candalaria, the youngest sister, to Juana, “for your voice is deeper than mine, and I shall be Anna.”

  “Agreed,” said Juana, with a lovely smile, and an arch twinkle of her eye towards me, and then launched forth in full tide, accompanying her sweet and mellow voice on that too much neglected instrument, the guitar. It was a wild, irregular sort of ditty, with one or two startling arabesque bursts in it. As near as may be, the following conveys the meaning, but not the poetry:—

  THE MOORISH MAID OF GRANADA.

  FERNANDO.

  “The setting moon hangs over the hill;

  On the dark pure breast of the mountain lake

  Still trembles her greenish silver wake,

  And the blue mist floats over the rill.

  And the cold streaks of dawning appear,

  Giving token that sunrise is near;

  And the fast-clearing east is flushing,

  And the watery clouds are blushing;

  And the day-star is sparkling on high,

  Like the fire of my Anna’s dark eye.

  “The ruby-red clouds in the east

  Float like islands upon the sea,

  When the winds are asleep on its breast;

  Ah, would that such calm were for me!

  “And see, the first streamer-like ray

  From the unrisen god of day,

  Is piercing the ruby-red clouds,

  Shooting up like golden shrouds:

  And like silver gauze falls the shower,

  Leaving diamonds on bank, bush, and bower,

  Amidst many an unopened flower

  Why walks the dark maid of Granada?”

  ANNA.

  “At evening when labour is done,

  And cooled in the sea is the sun;

  And the dew sparkles clear on the rose,

  And the flowers are beginning to close,

  Which at nightfall again in the calm

  Their incense to God breathe in balm;

  And the bat flickers up in the sky,

  And the beetle hums moaningly by;

  And to rest in the brake speeds the deer,

  While the nightingale sings loud and clear.

  “Scorched by the heat of the sun’s fierce light,

  The sweetest flowers are bending most

  Upon their slender stems;

  More faint are they than if tempest tost,

  Till they drink of the sparkling gems

  That fall from the eye of night.

  “Hark! from lattices guitars are tinkling,

  And though in heaven the stars are twinkling,

  No tell-tale moon looks over the mountain,

  To peer at her pale cold face in the fountain;

  And serenader’s mellow voice,

  Wailing of war, or warbling of love,—

  Of love, while the melting maid of his choice

  Leans out from her bower above.

  “All is soft and yielding towards night,

  When blending darkness shrouds all from the sight,

  But chaste, chaste, is this cold pure light,

  Sang the Moorish maid of Granada.”

  After the song, we all applauded, and the ladies, having made their congés, retired. The captain and I looked towards Aaron Bang and Don Ricardo; they were tooth and nail at something which we could not understand. So we wisely held our tongues.

  “Very strange all this,” quoth Bang.

  “Not at all,” said
Ricardo. “As I tell you, every slave here can have himself or herself appraised, at any time they may choose, with liberty to purchase their freedom day by day.”

  “But that would be compulsory manumission,” quoth Bang.

  “And if it be,” said Ricardo, “what then? The scheme works well here—why should it not do so there—I mean with you, who have so many advantages over us?”

  This is an unentertaining subject to most people, but having no bias myself, I have considered it but justice to insert in my log the following letter, which Bang, honest fellow, addressed to me, some years after the time I speak of:—

  “MY DEAR CCRINGLE,—Since I last saw you in London, it is nearly, but not quite, three years ago. I considered at the time we parted, that if I lived at the rate of £3000 a-year, I was not spending one-half of my average income, and on the faith of this I did plead guilty to my house in Park Lane, and a carriage for my wife,—and, in short, I spent my £3000 a-year. Where am I now? In the old shop at Mammee Gully—my two eldest daughters, little things, in the very middle of their education, hastily ordered out—shipped, as it were, like two bales of goods—to Jamaica; my eldest nephew, whom I had adopted, obliged to exchange from the ——— Light Dragoons, and to enter a foot regiment, receiving the difference, which but cleared him from his mess accounts. But the world says I was extravagant. Like Timon, however—no, d——n Timon—I spent money when I thought I had it, and therein I did no more than the Duke of Bedford, or Lord Grosvenor, or many another worthy peer; and now when I no longer have it, why, I cut my coat by my cloth, have made up my mind to perpetual banishment here, and I owe no man a farthing.

  “But all this is wandering from the subject. We are now asked in direct terms to free our slaves. I will not even glance at the injustice of this demand, the horrible infraction of rights that it would lead to; all this I will leave untouched; but, my dear fellow, were men in your service or the army to do us justice, each in his small sphere in England, how much good might you not do us! Officers of rank are, of all others, the most influential witnesses we could adduce, if they, like you, have had opportunities of judging for themselves. But I am rambling from my object. You may remember our escapade into Cuba, a thousand years ago, when you were a lieutenant of the Firebrand. Well, you may also remember Don Ricardo’s doctrine regarding the gradual emancipation of the negroes, and how we saw his plan in full operation—at least I did, for you knew little of these matters. Well, last year I made a note of what then passed, and sent it to an eminent West India merchant in London, who had it published in the Courier, but it did not seem to please either one party or the other—a signal proof, one would have thought, that there was some good in it. At a later period, I requested the same gentleman to have it published in Blackwood, where it would at least have had a fair trial on its own merits, but it was refused insertion. My very worthy friend ———, who acted for old Kit at that time as secretary of state for colonial affairs, did not like it, I presume; it trenched a little, it would seem, on the integrity of his great question; it approached to something like compulsory manumission, about which he does rave. Why will he not think on this subject like a Christian man? The country—I say so—will never sanction the retaining in bondage of any slave, who is willing to pay his master his fair appraised value.

  “Our friend———injures us, and himself too, a leetle by his ultra notions. However, hear what I propose, and what, as I have told you formerly, was published in the Courier by no less a man than Lord———:—

  “‘Scheme for the gradual Abolition of Slavery.

  “‘The following scheme of redemption for the slaves in our colonies is akin to a practice that prevails in some of the Spanish settlements.

  “‘We have now bishops (a most excellent measure), and we may presume that the inferior clergy will be much more efficient than heretofore. It is therefore proposed,—That every slave, on attaining the age of twenty-one years, should be, by Act of Parliament, competent to apply to his parish clergyman, and signify his desire to be appraised. The clergyman’s business would then be to select two respectable appraisers from amongst his parishioners, who would value the slave, calling in an umpire if they disagreed.

  “‘As men even of good principles will often be more or less swayed by the peculiar interests of the body to which they belong, the rector should be instructed, if he saw any flagrant swerving from an honest appraisement, to notify the same to his bishop, who, by application to the governor, if need were, could thereby rectify it. When the slave was thus valued, the valuation should be registered by the rector, in a book to be kept for that purpose, an attested copy of which should be annually lodged amongst the archives of the colony.

  “‘We shall assume a case, where a slave is valued for £120, Jamaica currency. He soon, by working by-hours, selling the produce of his provision-grounds, &c., acquires £20; and how easily and frequently this is done, every one knows, who is at all acquainted with West India affairs.

  “‘He then shall have a right to pay to his owner this £20 as the price of his Monday for ever, and his owner shall be bound to receive it. A similar sum would purchase him his freedom on Tuesday; and other four instalments, to use a West India phrase, would buy him free altogether. You will notice, I consider that he is already free on the Sunday. Now, where is the insurmountable difficulty here? The planter may be put to inconvenience, certainly—great inconvenience, but he has compensation, and the slave has his freedom—if he deserves it; and as his emancipation, in nine cases out of ten, would be a work of time, he would, as he approached absolute freedom, become more civilised— that is, more fit to be free; and as he became more civilised, new wants would spring up, so that when he was finally free, he would not be content to work a day or two in the week for subsistence merely. He would work the whole six to buy many little comforts, which, as a slave suddenly emancipated, he never would have thought of.

  “‘As the slave becomes free, I would have his owner’s allowance of provisions and clothing decrease gradually.”

  “‘It may be objected—”Suppose slaves partly free to be taken in execution and sold for debt?” I answer, let them be so. Why cannot three days of a man’s labour be sold by the deputy-marshal as well as six?

  “‘Again—”Suppose the gang is mortgaged, or liable to judgements against the owner of it?” I still answer, let it be so—only, in this case let the slave pay his instalments into court, in place of paying them to his owners, and let him apply to his rector for information in such a case.

  “‘By the register I would have kept, every one could at once see what property an owner had in his gang—that is, how many were actually slaves, and how many were in progress of becoming free. Thus well-disposed and industrious slaves would soon become freemen. But the idle and worthless would still continue slaves, and why the devil shouldn’t they?

  (Signed) A. B.’”

  There does seem to be a rough, yet vigorous sound sense in all this. But I take leave of the subject, which I do not profess to understand, only I am willing to bear witness in favour of my old friends, so far as I can conscientiously.

  We returned next day to Santiago, and had then to undergo the bitterness of parting. With me it was a slight affair, but the skipper!—However, I will not dwell on it. We reached the town towards evening. The women were ready to weep, I saw; but we all turned in, and next morning at breakfast we were moved, I will admit—some more, some less. Little Reefy, poor fellow, was crying like a child; indeed he was little more, being barely fifteen.

  “Oh, Mr Cringle, I wish I had never seen Miss Candalaria de los Dolores; indeed I do.”

  This was Don Ricardo’s youngest niece.

  “Ah, Reefy, Reefy,” said I, “you must make haste, and be made post, and then—”

  “What does he call her?” said Aaron.

  “Señora Tomassa Candalaria de los Dolores Gonzales y Vallejo,” blubbered out little Reefy.

  “What a complicated piece o
f machinery she must be!” gravely rejoined Bang.

  The meal was protracted to a very unusual length, but time and tide wait for no man. We rose. Aaron Bang advanced to make his bow to our kind hostess; he held out his hand, but she, to Aaron’s great surprise apparently, pushed it on one side, and regularly closing with our friend, hugged him in right earnest. I have before mentioned that she was a very small woman; so, as the devil would have it, the golden pin in her hair was thrust into Aaron’s eye, which made him jump back, wherein he lost his balance, and away he went, dragging Madama Campana down on the top of him. However, none of us could laugh now; we parted, jumped into our boat, and proceeded straight to the anchorage, where three British merchantmen were by this time riding, all ready for sea. We got on board. “Mr Yerk,” said the captain, “fire a gun, and hoist blue Peter at the fore. Loose the foretopsail.” The masters came on board for their instructions; we passed but a melancholy evening of it, and next morning I took my last look of Santiago de Cuba.

  CHAPTER XV.

  THE CRUISE OF THE WAVE—THE ACTION WITH THE SLAVER.

  “O’er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,

  Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free.

  Far as the breeze can hear the billow’s foam,

  Survey our empire, and behold our home,

  These are our realms, no limits to their sway—

  Our flag the sceptre all who meet obey.”

  The Corsair.

  AT THREE o’clock next morning, about an hour and a half before day-dawn, I was roused from my cot by the gruff voice of the boatswain on deck—”All hands up anchor.”

  The next moment the gunroom steward entered with a lantern, which he placed on the table—”Gentlemen, all hands up anchor, if you please.”