Tom Cringle's Log

by Michael Scott

  At length dinner was announced, and we adjourned from the dark balcony to the dining-room. “Come, there is light enough here; my rank will be noticed now, surely; but no—so patience.” The only males of the party were the doctor of the district, two Kingston gentlemen, young Palma, and Colonel B—— of the Guards; the ladies at dinner being my aunt, Mary, and her younger sister. We sat down all in high glee; I was sitting opposite my dearie. “Deuced strange—neither does she take any notice of my two epaulets;” and I glanced my eye, to be sure that they were both really there. I then, with some small misgivings, stole a look towards the Colonel—a very handsome fellow—with all the ease and polish of a soldier and a gentleman about him. “The devil, it cannot be, surely!” for the black-eyed and black-haired pale face seemed annoyingly attentive to the militaire. At length this said officer addressed me, “Captain Cringle, do me the honour to take wine.” Mary started at the Captain—

  “She gazed, she reddened like a rose,

  Syne pale as ony lily.”

  “Aha,” thought I, “all right still.” She trembled extremely, and her mother at length noticed it, I saw; but all this while B—— was balancing a land-crab on his silver fork, while, with a wine-glass in his other claw, he was ogling me in some wonderment. I saw the awkwardness of the affair, and seizing a bottle of catchup for one of sercial, I filled my glass with such vehemence that I spilt a great part of it; but even the colour and flavour did not recover me; so, with a face like a north-west moon, I swilled off the potion, and instantly fell back in my chair—”Poisoned I by all that is nonsensical—poisoned—catchup—O Lord!” and off I started to my bedroom, where, by dint of an ocean of hot water, I got quit of the sauce, and, clinching the whole with a caulker of brandy, I returned to the dinner-table a good deal abashed, I will confess, but endeavouring most emphatically all the while to laugh it off as a good jest. But my Mary was flown; she had been ailing for some days, her mother alleged, and she required rest. Presently my aunt rose, and we were left to our bottle, and, sorry am I to say it, I bumpered away from some strong unaccountable impulse until I got three parts drunk, to the great surprise of the rest of the party, for guzzling wine was not certainly a failing of mine, unless on the strong provocation of good fellowship.

  Mary did not appear that evening, and I may as well tell the whole truth, that she was pledged to marry me whenever I got my step; and next morning all this sort of thing was duly communicated to mamma, &c. &c. &c., and I was the happiest, and so forth—all of which, as it concerns no one but myself, if you please, we shall say no more about it.

  The beautiful cottage where we were sojourning was situated about three thousand feet above the level of the sea, and halfway up the great prong of the Blue Mountains, known by the name of the Liguanea range, which rises behind, and overhangs the city of Kingston. The road to it, after you have ridden about five miles over the hot plain of Liguanea, brings you to Hope estate, where an anatomy of an old watchman greeted me with the negro’s constant solicitation—”Massa, me beg you for one feepenny.” This youth was, as authentic records show, one hundred and forty years old only.—The Hope is situated in the very gorge of the pass, wherein you have to travel nine miles further, through most magnificent scenery; at one time struggling among the hot stones of the all but dry river-course, at others winding along the breezy cliffs, on mule-paths not twelve inches wide, with a perpendicular wall of rock rising five hundred feet above you on one side, while a dark gulf, a thousand feet deep, yawned on the other, from the bottom of which arose the hoarse murmur of the foliage-screened brook. Noble trees spread their boughs overhead, and the most beautiful shrubs and bushes grew and blossomed close at hand, and all was moist and cool and fresh until you turned the bare pinnacle of some limestone-rock, naked as the summit of the Andes where the hot sun, even through the thin attenuated air of that altitude, would suddenly blaze on you so fiercely that your eyes were blinded and your face blistered, as if you had been suddenly transported within the influence of a sirocco. Well, now since you know the road, let us take a walk after breakfast. It shall be a beautiful clear day—not a speck or cloud in the heavens. Mary is with me.

  “Well, Tom,” says she, “you were very sentimental last evening.”

  “Sentimental! I was deucedly sick, let me tell you; a wine-glassful of cold catchup is rather trying even to a lover’s stomach, Mary. Murder! I never was so sick, even in my first cruise in the old Breeze. Bah! Do you know I did not think of you for an hour afterwards?—not until that bumper of brandy stayed my calamity. But come, when shall we be married, Maria? Oh! have done with your blushing and botheration—to-morrow or next day? It would not be quite the thing this evening, would it?”

  “Tom, you are crazy.—Time enough, surely, when we all meet in England.”

  “And when may that be?” said I, drawing her arm closer through mine. “No, no—to-morrow I will call on the Admiral; and as you are all going to England in the fleet at any rate, I will ask his leave to give you a passage, and—and—and—”

  All of which, as I said before, being parish news, we shall drop a veil over it—so a small touch at the scenery again.

  Immediately under foot rose several lower ranges of mountains—those nearest us, covered with the laurel-looking coffee-bushes, interspersed with negro villages hanging amongst the fruit-trees like clusters of birds’ nests on the hill-side, with a bright green patch of plantain-suckers here and there, and a white painted overseer’s house peeping from out the wood, and herds of cattle in the Guinea-grass pieces. Beyond these stretched out the lovely plain of Liguanea, covered with luxuriant cane-pieces, and groups of negro-houses, and Guinea-grass pastures of even a deeper green than that of the canes; and small towns of sugar-works rose every here and there, with their threads of white smoke floating up into the clear sky, while, as the plain receded, the cultivation disappeared, and it gradually became sterile, hot, and sandy, until the Long Mountain hove its back like a whale from out the sea-like level of the plain, while to the right of it appeared the city of Kingston, like a model, with its parade, or place d’armes in the centre, from which its long lines of hot sandy streets stretched out at right angles, with the military post of Up-park Camp, situated about a mile and a half to the northward and eastward of the town. Through a tolerably good glass, the church-spire looked like a needle, the trees about the houses like bushes, the tall cocoa-nut trees like harebells; a slow crawling black speck here and there denoted a carriage moving along; while waggons, with their teams of eighteen or twenty oxen, looked like so many centipedes. At the camp, the two regiments drawn out on parade, with two nine-pounders on each flank, and their attendant gunners, looked like a red sparkling line, with two black spots at each end, surrounded by small black dots. Presently the red line wavered, and finally broke up as the regiments wheeled into open column, when the whole fifteen hundred men crawled past three little scarlet spots, denoting the general and his staff. When they began to manoeuvre, each company looked like a single piece in a game at chess, and, as they fired by companies, the little tiny puffs of smoke floated up like wreaths of wool, suddenly surmounting and overlaying the red lines; while the light companies, breaking away into skirmishers, seemed for all the world like two red bricks suddenly cast down, and shattered on the ground, whereby the fragments were scattered all over the green fields, and under the noble trees, the biggest of which looked like small cabbages. At length the line was again formed, and the inspection being over, it broke up once more, and the minute red fragments presently vanished altogether like a nest of ants—the guns looking like so many barley-corns, under the long lines of barracks, that seemed no bigger than houses in a child’s toy. As for the other arm, we of the navy had no reason to glorify ourselves; for while the review proceeded on shore, a strange man-of-war hove in sight in the offing, looming like a mussel-shell, although she was a forty-four gun frigate, and ran down before the wind close to the Palisadoes, or natural tongue of land, which juts out li
ke a bow from Rock Fort, to the eastward of Kingston, and hoops in the harbour, and then lengthens out, trending about five miles due west, where it widens out into a sandy flat, on which the town and forts of Port Royal are situated. She was saluting the Admiral when I first saw her. A red spark and a small puff on the starboard side—a puff, but no spark on the larboard, which was the side farthest from us, but no report from either reached our ears; and presently down came the little red flag, and up went the St George’s ensign, white, with a red cross, while the sails of the gallant craft seemed about the size of those of a little schoolboy’s plaything. After a short interval the flag-ship, a seventy-four, lying at Port Royal, returned the salute. She, again, appeared somewhat loftier; she might have been an oyster-shell; while the squadron of four frigates, two sloops of war, and several brigs and schooners, looked like ants in the wake of a beetle. As for the dear little Wave, I can compare her to nothing but a mosquito, and the large 500-ton West Indiamen lying off Kingston, five miles nearer, were but as small cock-boats to the eye. In the offing the sea appeared like ice, for the waves were not seen at all, and the swell could only be marked by the difference, in the reflection of the sun’s rays as it rose and fell, while a hot haze hung over the whole, making everything indistinct, so that the water blended into sky without the line of demarcation being visible. But, even as we looked forth on this most glorious scene, a small black cloud rose to windward. At this time we were both sitting on the grass on a most beautiful bank, beneath an orange-tree. The ominous appearance increased in size, the sea-breeze was suddenly stifled, the swelling sails of the frigate that had first saluted, fell, and, as she rolled, flattened in against the masts—the rustling of the green leaves overhead ceased.

  The cloud rolled onward from the east, and spread out, and out, as it sailed in from seaward, and on, and on, until it gradually covered the whole scene from our view (shipping and harbour and town and camp and sugar estates), boiling and rolling in black eddies under our feet. Anon the thunder began to grumble, and the zigzag lightning to fork out from one dark mass into another, while all where we sat was bright and smiling under the unclouded noonday sun. This continued for half an hour, when at length the sombre appearance of the clouds below us brightened into a sea of white fleecy vapour like wool, which gradually broke away into detached masses, discovering another layer of still thinner vapour underneath, which again parted, disclosing through the interstices a fresh gauzelike veil of transparent mist, through which the lower ranges of hills and the sugar estates and the town and shipping were once more dimly visible; but this in turn vanished, and the clouds, attracted by the hills, floated away, and hung around them in festoons, and gradually rose and rose until presently we were enveloped in mist, and Mary spoke—”Tom, there will be thunder here—what shall we do?”

  “Pooh, never mind, Mary; you have a conductor on the house.”

  “True,” said she; “but the servants, when the post that supported it was blown down t’other day, very judiciously unlinked the rods, and now, since I remember me, they are, to use your phrase, ‘stowed away’ below the house;” and so they were, sure enough. However, we had no more thunder, and soon the only indications of the spent storm were the increased distinctness of objects at a distance, the coolness and purity of the air, the brighter green of the cane-fields, and the red discoloured appearance of the margin of the harbour, from the rush of muddy water off the land, and the chocolate colour of the previously snow-white sandy roads, that now twisted through the plain like black snakes, and a fleecy dolphin-shaped cloud here and there stretching out, and floating horizontally in the blue sky, as if it had been hooked to the precipitous mountain-tops above us.

  Next day it was agreed that we should all return to Kingston and the day after that, we proceeded to Mr Bang’s Pen, on the Spanish Town road, as a sort of half-way house or stepping-stone to his beautiful residence in St-Thomas-in-the-Vale, where we were all invited to spend a fortnight. Our friend himself was on the other side of the island, but he was to join us in the valley, and we found our comforts carefully attended to; and as the day after we had set up our tent at the Pen was to be one of rest to my aunt, I took the opportunity of paying my respects to the Admiral, who was then careening at his mountain retreat in the vicinity with his family. Accordingly, I took horse, and rode along the margin of the great lagoon, on the Spanish Town road, through tremendous defiles; and after being driven into a watchman’s hut by the rain, I reached the house, and was most graciously received by Sir Samuel Semaphore and his lady and their lovely daughters.—Oh, the most splendid women that ever were built! The youngest is now, I believe, the prime ornament of the Scottish Peerage; and I never can forget the pleasure I so frequently experienced in those days in the society of this delightful family. The same evening I returned to the Pen. On my way I fell in with three officers in white jackets and broad-brimmed straw hats, wading up to the waist amongst the reeds of the lagoon, with guns held high above their heads. They were shooting ducks, it seemed; and their negro servants were heard ploutering and shouting amidst the thickets of the crackling reeds, while their dogs were swimming all about them.

  “Hillo!” shouted the nearest—”Cringle, my lad—whither bound? how is Sir Samuel and Lady Semaphore, eh? Capital sport, ten brace of teal—there;” and the spokesman threw two beautiful birds ashore to me. This wise man of the bulrushes was no less a personage than Sir Jeremy Mayo, the commander of the forces, one of the bravest fellows in the army, and respected and beloved by all who ever knew him, but a regular dare-devil of an Irishman, who, not satisfied with his chance of yellow fever on shore, had thus chosen to hunt for it with his staff in the Caymanas Lagoon.

  Next morning we set out in earnest on our travels for St Thomas-in-the-Vale, in two of our friend Bang’s gigs, and my aunt’s ketureen, laden with her black maiden and a lot of bandboxes, while two mounted servants brought up the rear, and my old friend Jupiter, who had descended—not from the clouds, but from the excellent Mr Fyall, who was by this time gathered to his fathers—to Massa Aaron, rode a musket-shot ahead of the convoy to clear away or give notice of any impediments of waggons or carts, or droves of cattle, that might be meeting us.

  After driving five miles or so we reached the seat of government, Spanish Town. Here we stopped at the Speaker’s house—by the way, one of the handsomest and most agreeable men I ever saw—intending to proceed in the afternoon to our destination. But the rain in the forenoon fell so heavily that we had to delay our journey until next morning; and that afternoon I spent in attending the debates in the House of Assembly, where everything was conducted with much greater decorum than I ever saw maintained in the House of Commons, and no great daring in the assertion either. The Hall itself, fitted with polished mahogany benches, was handsome and well aired, and between it and the grand court, as it is called, occupying the other end of the building, which was then sitting, there is a large cool saloon, generally in term time well filled with wigless lawyers and their clients. The House of Assembly (this saloon and the court-house forming one side of the square) is situated over against the Government House; while another side is occupied by a very handsome temple, covering in a statue erected to Lord Rodney, the saver of the island, as he is always called, from having crushed the fleet of Count de Grasse.

  At length, at grey dawn the next day, as the report of the morning gun came booming along the level plain from Port Royal, we weighed, and finally started on our cruise. As we drove up towards St-Thomas-in-the-Vale from Spanish Town, along the hot sandy road, the plain gradually roughened into small rocky eminences, covered with patches of bushes here and there, with luxuriant Guinea-grass growing in the clefts; the road then sank between abrupt little hills, the Guinea-corn fields began to disappear, the grass became greener, the trees rose higher, the air felt fresher and cooler, and, proceeding still farther, the hills on either side swelled into mountains and became rocky and precipitous, and drew together, as it were, until they appeared
to impend over us. We had now arrived at the gorge of the pass leading into the valley, through which flowed a most beautiful limpid clear blue stream, along the margin of which the road wound, while the tree-clothed precipices rose five hundred feet perpendicularly on each brink. Presently we crossed a wooden bridge, supported by a stone pier in the centre, when Jupiter pricked ahead to give notice of the approach of waggons, that our cavalcade might haul up, out of danger, into some nook in the rock, to allow the lumbersome teams to pass.

  “What is that?”—I was driving my dearie in the leading gig—”is that a pistol-shot?” It was the crack of the long whip carried by the negro waggoner, reverberated from hill to hill, and from cliff to cliff; and presently the father of gods came thundering down the steep acclivity we were ascending.

  “Massa, draw up into dat corner; draw up.”

  I did as I was desired, and presently the shrill whistle of the negro waggoners, and the increasing sharpness of the reports of their whips, the handles of which were as long as fishing-rods, and their wild exclamations to their cattle, to whom they addressed themselves by name, as if they had been reasonable creatures, gave notice of the near approach of a train of no fewer than seven waggons, each with three drivers, eighteen oxen, three hogsheads of sugar, and two puncheons of rum.