Tom Cringle's Log

by Michael Scott

  After an exceedingly pleasant day we returned home, and next morning, when I got out of bed, I complained of a violent itching and pain, a sort of nondescript sensation, a mixture of pain and pleasure, in my starboard great toe, and on reconnoitring, I discovered it to be a good deal inflamed on the ball, round a blue spot about the size of a pin-head. Pegtop had come into the room, and while he was placing my clothes in order, I asked him “What this could be—gout, think you, Massa Pegtop—gout?”

  “Gote, massa—gote—no, no; him chiger, massa—chiger—little something like one flea, poke him head under de kin, dere lay egg; ah, great luxury to creole gentleman and lady dat chiger; sweet pain, creole miss say—nice for cratch him, him say.”

  “Why, it may be a creole luxury, Pegtop, but I wish you would relieve me of it.”

  “Surely, massa, surely, if you wish it” said Pegtop, in some surprise at my want of taste. “Lend me your penknife den, massa;” and he gabbled as he extracted from my flesh the chiger bag—like a blue pill in size and colour.

  “O, massa, top till you marry creole wife, she will tell you me say true; ah, daresay Miss Mary himself love chiger to tickle him—to be sure him love to be tickle—him love to be tickle— ay, all creole miss love to be tickle—he, he, he!”

  By agreement, Mr Bang and I met Mr Stornaway this morning, in order to visit some other estates together and during our ride I was particularly gratified by his company. He was a man of solid and very extensive acquirements, and far above what his situation in life at that time led one to expect. When I revisited the island, some years afterwards, I was rejoiced to find that his intrinsic worth and ability had floated him up into a very extensive business, and I believe he is now a man of property. I rather think he is engaged in some statistical work connected with Jamaica, which, I am certain, will do him credit whenever it appears. Odd enough, the very first time I saw him I said I was sure he would succeed in the world; and I am glad to find I was a true prophet. To return: Our chief object at present was to visit a neighbouring estate, the overseer of which was, we were led to believe, from a message sent to Mr Bang, very ill with fever. He was a most respectable young man, Mr Stornaway told me, a Swede by birth, who had come over to England with his parents at the early age of eight years, where both he and his cousin Agatha had continued, until he embarked for the West Indies. This was an orphan girl whom his father had adopted, and both of them, as he had often told Mr Stornaway, had utterly forgotten their Swedish; in fact, they understood no language but English at the time he embarked. I have been thus particular, from a very extraordinary phenomenon that occurred immediately preceding his dissolution, of which I was a witness.

  We rode up in front of the door, close to the fixed manger, where the horses and mules belonging to the busha are usually fed, and encountered a negro servant on a mule, with an umbrella-case slung across his back, and a portmanteau behind him, covered with the usual sheep’s fleece, and holding a saddle-horse.

  “Where is your master?” said Mr Bang.

  “De dactor is in de hose,” replied Quashie. “Busha dere upon dying.”

  We ascended the rocky unhewn steps, and entered the cool dark hall, smelling strong of camphor, and slid over the polished floors towards an open door, that led into the back piazza, where we were received by the head bookkeeper and carpenter. They told us that the overseer had been seized three days before with fever, and was now desperately ill; and presently the doctor came forth out of the sick-room.

  “Poor Wedderfelt is fast going, sir; cold at the extremities already—very bad fever—the bilious remittent of the country, of the worst type.”

  All this while the servants, male and female, were whispering to each other, while a poor little black fellow sat at the door of the room, crying bitterly—this was the overseer’s servant. We entered the room, which was darkened from the jealousies being all shut, except one of the uppermost, which happening to be broken, there was a strong pensil of light cast across the head of the bed where the sick man lay, while the rest of the apartment was involved in gloom.

  The sufferer seemed in the last stage of yellow fever; his skin was a bright yellow, his nose sharp, and his general features very much pinched. His head had been shaven, and there was a handkerchief bound round it over a plantain-leaf, the mark of the blister coming low down on his forehead, where the skin was shrivelled like dry parchment; apparently it had not risen. There was also a blister on his chest. He was very restless, clutching the bedclothes, and tossing his limbs about; his mouth was ulcerated, and blood oozed from the corners; his eyes were a deep yellow, with the pupil much dilated, and very lustrous; he was breathing with a heavy moaning noise when we entered, and looked wildly round, mistaking Mr Bang and me for some other persons. Presently he began to speak very quickly, and to lift one of his hands repeatedly close to his face, as if there was something in it he wished to look at. I presently saw that it held a miniature of a fair-haired, blue-eyed, Scandinavian girl; but apparently he could not see it, from the increasing dimness of his eyes, which seemed to distress him greatly. After a still minute, during which no sound was heard but his own heavy breathing, he again began to speak very rapidly, but no one in the room could make out what he said. I listened attentively; it struck me as being like—I was certain of it—it was Swedish, which in health he had entirely forgotten but now in his dying moments vividly remembered. Alas! it was a melancholy and a moving sight, to perceive all the hitherto engrossing thoughts and incidents of his youth and manhood, all save the love of one dear object, suddenly vanished from the tablet of his memory, ground away and abrased, as it were, by his great agony; or like worthless rubbish, removed from above some beautiful ancient inscription, which for ages it had hid, disclosing in all their primeval freshness, sharp cut into his dying heart, the long-smothered but never-to-be-obliterated impressions of his early childhood. I could plainly distinguish the name Agatha, whenever he peered with fast glazing eyes on the miniature. All this while a nice little brown child was lying playing with his watch and seals on the bed beside him, while a handsome coloured girl, a slight young creature, apparently its mother, sat on the other side of the dying man, supporting his head on her lap, and wetting his mouth every now and then with a cloth dipped in brandy.

  As he raised the miniature to his face, she would gently endeavour to turn away his hand, that he might not look at one whom she, poor thing, no doubt considered was usurping the place in his fluttering heart that she long fancied had been filled by herself solely; and at other times she would vainly try to coax it out of his cold hand, but the dying grasp was now one of iron, and her attempts evidently discomposed the departing sinner; but all was done kindly and quietly, and a flood of tears would every now and then stream down her cheeks, as she failed in her endeavours, or as the murmured, gasped name, Agatha, reached her ear.

  “Ah!” said she, “him heart not wid me now—it far away in him own country—him never will make me yeerie what him say again no more.”

  Oh, woman, woman! who can fathom that heart of thine! By this time the hiccup grew stronger, and all at once he sat up strong in his bed without assistance, “light as if he felt no wound;” but immediately thereafter gave a strong shudder, ejecting from his mouth a jet of dark matter like the grounds of chocolate, and fell back dead—whereupon the negroes began to howl and shriek in such a horrible fashion that we were glad to leave the scene.

  Next day, when we returned to attend the poor fellow’s funeral, we found a complete bivouac of horses and black servants under the trees in front of the house, which was full of neighbouring planters and overseers, all walking about, and talking, and laughing, as if it had been a public meeting on parish business. Some of them occasionally went into the room to look at the body as it lay in the open coffin, the lid of which was at length screwed down, and the corpse carried on four negroes’ shoulders to its long home, followed by the brown girl and all the servants, the latter weeping and howling; but she, poor
thing, said not a word, although her heart seemed, from the convulsive heaving of her bosom, like to burst. He was buried under a neighbouring orange-tree, the service being read by the Irish carpenter of the estate, who got half a page into the marriage service by mistake before either he or any one else noticed he was wrong.

  Three clays after this the Admiral extended my leave for a fortnight, which I spent in a tour round this most glorious island with friend Aaron, whose smiling face, like the sun (more like the nor’west moon in a fog, by the by), seemed to diffuse warmth and comfort and happiness wherever he went, while Sir Samuel and his charming family, and the general, and my dearie and her aunt, returned home; and after a three weeks’ philandering I was married, and all that sort of thing, and a week afterwards embarked with my treasure—for I had half a million of dollars on freight, as well as my own particular jewel; and don’t grin at the former, for they gave me a handsome sum, and helped to rig us when we got to Ould England, where Lotus-Leaf was paid off, and I settled for a time on shore, the happiest, &c. &c. &c., until some years afterwards, when the wee Cringles began to tumble home so deucedly fast that I had to cut and run, and once more betake myself to the salt sea. My aunt and her family returned at the same time to England, in a merchant-ship under my convoy, and became our neighbours. Bang also got married soon after to Miss Lucretia Wagtail, by whom he got the Slap estate. But old Gelid and my other allies remain, I believe, in single blessedness until this hour.

  My tale is told—my yarn is ended; and were I to spin it longer I fear it would be only bending it “end for end;” yet still I linger, “like the sough of an auld sang” on the ear, loth to pronounce that stern heart-crushing word, that yet “has been and must be,” and which, during my boisterous and unsettled morning, has been, alas! a too familiar one with me. I hope I shall always bless Heaven for my fair blinks, although, as the day has wore on, I have had my own share of lee-currents, hard gales, and foul weather; and many an old and dear friend has lately swamped alongside of me, while few new ones have shoved out to replace them. But suffering, that scathes the heart, does not always make it callous; and I feel much of the woman hanging about mine still—even now, when the tide is on the turn with me, and the iron voice of the inexorable First-Lieutenant, Time, has sung out, “Strike the bell eight,”—every chime smiting on my soul as if an angel spoke, to warn me that my stormy forenoon watch is at length over; that the sun, now passing the meridian, must soon decline towards the western horizon, and who shall assure himself of a cloudless setting?

  I have, in very truth, now reached the summit of the bald spray-washed promontory, and stand on the slippery ledge of the cliff that trembles to the thundering of the surge beneath; but the plunge must be made—so at once, Farewell, all hands, and God bless ye! If, while chucking the cap about at a venture—but I hope and trust there has been no such thing—it has alighted on the head of some ancient ally, and pinched in any the remotest degree, I hereby express my most sincere and heartfelt regret; and to such a one I would say as he said who wrote for all time,

  “I have shot

  Mine arrow o’er the house, and hurt my brother.”

  Thus I cut my stick while the play is good, and before the public gets wearied of me; and as for the Log, it is now launched, swim or founder: if those things be good, it will float from its own buoyancy; if they be naught, let it sink at once and for ever—all that Tom Cringle expects at the hands of his countrymen, is—A CLEAR STAGE, AND NO FAVOUR.

  THE END.

  * Thus freely:—”Heaven defend me, what a devil! Ah, Pancho Roque, you are ruined, my fine fellow—you are ruined, my little man, so sure as turnips am not cauliflowers. Oh, tail of St Anthony’s pig, that it should come to this!”