Tom Cringle's Log

by Michael Scott

  We had made ourselves as snug as it was possible to be in such weather, under an awning of boat-sails, and had kindled a fire in a tub at the bottom of the boat, at which we had made ready some slices of beef, and roasted some yams, and were—all hands, master and men—making ourselves comfortable with a glass of grog, when the warp by which we rode suddenly parted, from a puff of wind that eddied down on us over the little cape, and before we could get the oars out we were tailing on the beach at the opposite side of the small bay. However, we soon regained our original position, by which time all was calm again where we lay; and this time we sent the end of the line ashore, making it fast round a tree, and once more rode in safety. But I could not sleep, and the rain having ceased, the clouds broke away, and the moon once more shone out cold, bright, and clear. I had stepped forward from under the temporary awning, and was standing on the thwart, looking out to windward, endeavouring to judge of the weather at sea, and debating in my own mind whether it would be prudent to weigh before daylight or remain where we were. But all in the offing, beyond the small headland, under the lee of which we lay, was dark and stormy water, and white-crested howling waves, although our snug little bay continued placid and clear, with the moonbeams dancing on the twinkling ripple, that was lap, lapping, and sparkling like silver on the snow-white beach of sand and broken shells; while the hills on shore, that rose high and abrupt close to, were covered with thick jungle, from which here and there a pinnacle of naked grey rock would shoot up like a gigantic spectre, or a tall tree would cast its long black shadow over the waving sea of green leaves that undulated in the breeze beneath.

  As the wind was veering about rather capriciously, I had cast my eye anxiously along the warp, to see how it bore the strain, when, to my surprise, it appeared to thicken at the end next the tree, and presently something like a screw, about a foot long, that occasionally shone like glass in the moonlight, began to move along the taut line, with a spiral motion. All this time one of the boys was fast asleep, resting on his folded arms on the gunwale, his head having dropped down on the stem of the boat; but one of the Spanish bogas in the canoe, which was anchored close to us, seeing me gazing at something, now looked in the same direction; the instant he caught the object he thumped with his palms on the side of the canoe, exclaiming, in a loud, alarmed tone— “Culebra—culebra!—a snake, a snake!”—on which the reptile made a sudden and rapid slide down the line towards the bow of the boat where the poor lad was sleeping, and immediately afterwards dropped into the sea.

  The sailor rose and walked aft, as if nothing had happened, amongst his messmates, who had been alarmed by the cries of the Spanish canoeman, and I was thinking little of the matter when I heard some anxious whispering amongst them.

  “Fred,” said one of the men, “what is wrong, that you breathe so hard?”

  “Why, boy, what ails you?” said another.

  “Something has stung me,” at length said the poor little fellow, speaking thick, as if he had laboured under sore throat. The truth flashed on me, a candle was lit, and, on looking at him, he appeared stunned, complained of cold, and suddenly assumed a wild startled look.

  He evinced great anxiety and restlessness, accompanied by a sudden and severe prostration of strength—still continuing to complain of great and increasing cold and chilliness, but he did not shiver. As yet no part of his body was swollen, except very slightly about the wound; however, there was a rapidly increasing rigidity of the muscles of the neck and throat, and within half an hour after he was bit he was utterly unable to swallow even liquids. The small whip-snake—the most deadly asp in the whole list of noxious reptiles peculiar to South America—was not above fourteen inches long; it had made four small punctures with its fangs, right over the left jugular vein, about an inch below the chin. There was no blood oozing from them, but a circle, about the size of a crown-piece, of dark red surrounded them, gradually melting into blue at the outer rim, which again became fainter and fainter, until it disappeared in the natural colour of the skin. By the advice of the Spanish boatmen, we applied an embrocation of the leaves of the palma Christi, or castor-oil nut, as hot as the lad could bear it, but we had neither oil nor hot milk to give internally, both of which, they informed us, often proved specifics. Rather than be at anchor until morning under these melancholy circumstances, I shoved out into the rough water, but we made little of it, and when the day broke I saw that the poor fellow’s fate was sealed. His voice had become inarticulate, the coldness had increased, all motion in the extremities had ceased, the legs and arms became quite stiff, the respiration slow and difficult, as if the blood had coagulated, and could no longer circulate through the heart, or as if, from some unaccountable effect of the poison on the nerves, the action of it had been impeded; still the poor little fellow was perfectly sensible, and his eye bright and restless. His breathing became still more interrupted—he could no longer be said to breathe, but gasped—and in another half hour, like a steam engine when the fire is withdrawn, the strokes, or contractions and expansions of his heart, became slower and slower until they ceased altogether.

  From the very moment of his death the body began rapidly to swell and become discoloured; the face and neck especially were nearly as black as ink within half an hour of it, when blood began to flow from the mouth, and other symptoms of rapid decomposition succeeded each other so fast that, by nine in the morning, we had to sew him up in a boatsail, with a large stone, and launch the body into the sea.

  We continued to struggle against the breeze until eleven o’clock in the forenoon of the 27th, when the wind again increased to such a pitch that we had to cast off our tow and leave her on the coast under the charge of little Reefpoint, with instructions to remain in the creek where he was until the schooner picked him up; we then pushed once more through the surf for Porto-Bello, where we arrived in safety at 5 P.M. Next morning at daylight we got under weigh, and stood down for the canoe; and having received the money on board, and the Spaniards who accompanied it, and poor mulo, we made sail for Kingston, Jamaica, and on the 4th of the following month were off Carthagena once more, having been delayed by calms and light winds. The captain of the port shoved out to us, and I immediately recognised him as the officer to whom poor old Deadeye once gave a deuced fright, when we were off the town, in the old Torch, during the siege, shortly before she foundered in the hurricane; but in the present instance he was all civility. On his departure we made sail, and arrived at Kingston, safe and sound, in the unusually short passage of sixty hours from the time we left Carthagena.

  Here the first thing I did was to call on some of my old friends, with one of whom I found a letter lying for me from Mr Bang, requesting a visit at his domicile in St-Thomas-in-the-Vale so soon as I arrived; and through the extreme kindness of my Kingston allies, I had, on my intention of accepting it being known, at least half-a-dozen gigs offered to me, with servants and horses, and I don’t know what all. I made my selection, and had arranged to start at day-dawn next morning, when a cousin of mine, young Palma, came in where I was dining, and said that his mother and the family had arrived in town that very day, and were bound on a pic-nic party next morning to visit the Falls in St David’s. I agreed to go, and to postpone my visit to friend Aaron for the present; and very splendid scenery did we see; but as I had seen the Falls of Niagara, of course I was not astonished. There was a favourite haunt and cave of Three-fingered Jack shown to us in the neighbourhood, very picturesque and romantic, and all that sort of thing; but I was escorting my Mary, and the fine scenery and roaring waters were at this time thrown away on me. However, there was one incident amusing enough. Mary and I had wandered away from the rest of the party, about a mile above the cascade, where the river was quiet and still, and divided into several tiny streams or pools, by huge stones that had rolled from the precipitous banks down into its channel, when, on turning an angle of the rock, we came unexpectedly on my old ally Whiffle, with a cigar in his mouth, seated on a cane-bottomed chair,
close to the brink of the water, with a little low table at his right hand, on which stood a plate of cold meat, over which his black servant held a green branch, with which he was brushing the flies away, while a large rummer of cold brandy grog was immersed in the pool at his feet, covered up with a cool plantain leaf. He held a long fishing-rod in his hands, eighteen feet at the shortest, fit to catch salmon with, which he had to keep nearly upright, in order to let his hook drop into the pool, which was not above five feet wide; why he did not heave it by hand I am sure I cannot tell; indeed, I would as soon have thought of angling for goldfish in my aunt’s glass globe— and there he sat fishing with great complacency. However, he seemed a little put out when we came up. “Ah, Tom how do you do?—Miss, your most obsequious—No rain—mullet deucedly shy, Tom—ah! what a glorious nibble —there—there again—I have him;” and sure enough, he had hooked a fine mountain mullet, weighing about a pound and a half, and in the ecstasy of the moment, and his hurry to land him handsomely, he regularly capsized in his chair, upset the rummer of brandy grog, and table and all the rest of it. We had a good laugh, and then rejoined our party, and that evening we all sojourned at Lucky Valley, a splendid coffee estate, with a most excellent man and an exceedingly obliging fellow for a landlord.

  Next day we took a long ride, to visit a German gentleman, who had succeeded in a wonderful manner in taming fish. He received us very hospitably, and after lunch we all proceeded to his garden, through which ran a beautiful stream of the clearest water. It was about four feet broad and a foot deep, where it entered the garden, but gradually widened in consequence of a dam with stakes at the top having been erected at the lower part of it, until it became a pool twelve feet broad, and four feet deep, of the most beautiful crystal-clear water that can be imagined, while the margin on both sides was fringed with the fairest flowers that Europe or the tropics could afford. We all peered into the stream, but could see nothing except an occasional glance of a white scale or fin now and then.—”Liverpool!” shouted the old German who was doing the honours,—”Liverpool, come bring de food for de fis.” Liverpool, a respectable-looking negro, approached, and stooping down at the water-edge, held a piece of roasted plantain close to the surface of it. In an instant, upwards of a hundred mullet, large fine fish, some of them above a foot long, rushed from out the dark clear depths of the quiet pool, and jumped, and walloped, and struggled for the food, although the whole party were standing close by. Several of the ladies afterwards tried their hand, and the fish, although not apparently quite so confident, after a tack here and a tack there, always in the end came close to and made a grab at what was held to them.

  That evening I returned to Kingston, where I found an order lying for me to repair as second-lieutenant on board the Firebrand once more, and to resign the command of the Wave to no less a man than Moses Yerk, Esquire; and a happy man was Moses, and a gallant fellow be proved himself in her, and earned laurels and good freights of specie, and is now comfortably domiciled amongst his friends.

  The only two Waves that I successfully made interest at their own request to get back with me were Tailtackle and little Reefpoint.

  Time wore on—days and weeks and months passed away, during which we were almost constantly at sea; but incidents worth relating had grown scarce, as we were now in piping times of peace, when even a stray pirate had become a rarity, and a luxury denied to all but the small craft people. On one of our cruises, however, we had been working up all morning to the southward of the Pedro shoals, with the wind strong at east, a hard fiery sea-breeze. We had hove about, some three hours before, and were standing in towards the land, on the starboard tack, when the look-out at the masthead hailed.

  “The water shoals on the weather-bow, sir;” and presently, “Breakers right ahead.”

  “Very well,” I replied—”all right!”

  “We are nearing the reefs, sir,” said I, walking aft, and addressing Captain Transom; “shall we stand by to go about, sir?”

  “Certainly—heave in stays as soon as you like, Mr Cringle.” At this moment the man aloft again sang out—”There is a wreck on the weathermost point of the long reef, sir.”

  “Ay! what does she look like?”

  “I see the stumps of two lower masts, but the bowsprit is gone, sir—I think she must be a schooner or a brig, sir.”

  The captain was standing by, and looked up to me, as I stood on the long eighteen at the weather-gangway.

  “Is the breeze not too strong, Mr Cringle?”

  I glanced my eye over the side—”Why, no, sir—a boat will live well enough—there is not so much sea in shore here.”

  “Very well—haul the courses up, and heave to.”

  It was done.

  “Pipe away the yawlers, boatswain’s mate.”

  The boat over the lee-quarter was lowered, and I was sent to reconnoitre the object that had attracted our attention. As we approached we passed the floating swollen carcasses of several bullocks, and some pieces of wreck; and getting into smooth water, under the lee of the reef, we pulled up under the stern of the shattered hull which lay across it, and scrambled on deck by the boat-tackles that hung from the davits, as if the jolly-boat had recently been lowered. The vessel was a large Spanish schooner, apparently about one hundred and eighty tons burden, nearly new; everything strong and well fitted about her, with a beautiful spacious flush deck, surrounded by high solid bulwarks. All the boats had disappeared; they might either have been carried away by the crew, or washed overboard by the sea. Both masts were gone about ten feet above the deck, which, with the whole of their spars and canvass, and the wreck of the bowsprit, were lumbering and rattling against the lee-side of the vessel, and splashing about in the broken water, being still attached to the hull by the standing rigging, no part of which had been cut away. The mainsail, gaff-topsail, foresail, fore-topsail, fore-staysail, and jib were all set, so she must most likely have gone on the reef, either under a press of canvass in the night, in ignorance of its vicinity, or by missing stays.

  She lay on her beam-ends across the coral rock, on which there was about three feet water where shallowest, and had fallen over to leeward, presenting her starboard broadside to the sea, which surged along it in a slanting direction, while the lee gunwale was under water. The boiling white breakers were dashing right against her bows, lifting them up with every send, and thundering them down again against the flint-hard coral spikes, with a loud gritting rumble; while every now and then the sea made a fair breach over them, flashing up over the whole deck aft to the taffrail in a snowstorm of frothy flakes. Forward in the bows there lay, in one horrible fermenting and putrifying mass, the carcasses of about twenty bullocks, part of her deck-load of cattle, rotted into one hideous lump, with the individual bodies of the poor brutes almost obliterated and undistinguishable, while streams of decomposed animal matter were ever and anon flowing down to leeward, although as often washed away by the hissing waters. But how shall I describe the scene of horror that presented itself in the after-part of the vessel, under the lee of the weather-bulwarks!

  There, lashed to the ring-bolts, and sheltered from the sun and sea by a piece of canvass, stretched across a broken oar, lay, more than half naked, the dead bodies of an elderly female, and three young women; one of the latter with two lifeless children fastened by handkerchiefs to her waist, while each of the other two had the corpse of an infant firmly clasped in her arms.

  It was the dry season, and as they lay right in the wake of the windward ports, exposed to a thorough draft of air, and were defended from the sun and the spray, no putrefaction had taken place; the bodies looked like mummies, the shrunken muscles and wasted features being covered with a dry horny skin, like parchment; even the eyes remained full and round, as if they had been covered over with a hard dim scale.

  On looking down into the steerage we saw another corpse, that of a tall young slip of a Spanish girl, surging about in the water, which reached nearly to the deck, with her long bl
ack hair floating and spread out all over her neck and bosom, but it was so offensive and decayed, that we were glad to look another way. There was no male corpse to be seen, which, coupled with the absence of the boats, evinced but too clearly that the crew had left the females, with their helpless infants, on the wreck to perish. There was a small round-house on the afterpart of the deck, in which we found three other women alive, but wasted to skeletons. We took them into the boat, but one died in getting her over the side; the other two we got on board, and I am glad to say that they both recovered. For two days neither could speak; there seemed to be some rigidity about the throat and mouth that prevented them; but at length the youngest—(the other was her servant)—a very handsome woman, became strong enough to tell us, “that it was the schooner Caridad that we had boarded, bound from Rio de la Hache to Savana la Mar, where she was to have discharged her deck-load of cattle, and afterwards to have proceeded to Batabano, in Cuba. She had struck, as I surmised, in the night, about a fortnight before we fell in with her; and next morning, the crew and male passengers took to the boats, which with difficulty contained them, leaving the women under a promise to come back that evening, with assistance from the shore, but they never appeared, nor were they ever after heard of.” And here the poor thing cried as if her heart would break. “Even my own Juan, my husband, left me and my child to perish on the wreck. O God! O God! I could not have left him—I could not have left him.”

  There had been three families on board, with their servants, who were emigrating to Cuba, all of whom had been abandoned by the males, who, as already related, must in all human probability have perished after their unmanly desertion. As the whole of the provisions were under water, and could not be got at, the survivors had subsisted on raw flesh so long as they had strength to cut it, or power to swallow it; what made the poor creature tell it, I cannot imagine, if it were not to give the most vivid picture possible, in her conception, of their loneliness and desolation, but she said, “no sea-bird even ever came near us.”