Chapter L: "smith" of the Royals

Flushed by this new conquest, "Hispaniola," was now our _cri de guerre_; and while troops, prisoners, sick and wounded were all re-embarked, and the squadron, after being careened and refitted, prepared to unite, previous to attacking that large and valuable island (an intention never carried out), I was ordered to convey thirty French civilians under a cartel to Dominica, while Harry Smith of the Royals, the aide-de-camp, who, as already related, had been wounded by a cannon-shot on our landing, was ordered to convey stores, despatches, and a few captured slaves to Jamaica. For these services, two large ships, formerly privateers (_L'Etna_ and _L'Ami du Peuple_), which we found concealed in a cove at Terre d'en Haut, were fitted for sea by the carpenters and riggers of the _Adder_. Captain Cranky sent a small but well-armed prize-crew under a midshipman on board of each. Smith who was in love with a girl in Jamaica, where he had formerly been stationed, accepted his duty with joy; but I bade adieu to my comrades with a regret that almost amounted to a foreboding, and shifted my traps on board the _Etna_. He with his sable charge, and I with my jabbering Frenchmen separated, and with a fair wind we bore away from the rocky isles of Los Santos.

Neither of us sailed under convoy; we had no fear of French ships of war, or privateers, as old Sir John Jervis had swept them alike from the Leeward and Windward Isles, and all the Caribean sea.

_L'Etna_ was a smart and sharply-built vessel, with a low hull, raking masts, pierced for eight twelve-pounders, and all painted black. While in French hands, she did great damage to our West-India trade. Mr. Stanley, a midshipman of the _Adder_, commanded the prize-crew.

We stood down the Canal des Saintes, and after rounding Point du Vieux Fort of Guadaloupe, we lost sight of Harry Smith's craft, which bore away into the Caribean Sea, while we hauled up for Dominica, on a lovely evening, when the sky was all of a warm lilac hue, which paled to blue as the golden sun sank down and vanished like a flaming shield.

After our separation, the adventures of both were very remarkable. Poor Harry's, at that time, made much more noise than mine, being full of romance, notwithstanding his most unromantic surname; and a narrative of these, written by Haystone of ours, appeared in more than one public journal. As he and they are alike forgotten now, before resuming the thread of my own story, I will briefly relate the strange catastrophe which befell the unfortunate aide-de-camp.

_L'Ami du Peuple_, after encountering a gale of wind which carried away her topmasts, reached Jamaica; where Smith, after landing his stores and his sable detachment, hastened to the house of M. du Plessis, to whose daughter, Aurore, he was deeply attached. Many of our fellows at this time got themselves into scrapes with the pretty Creoles and Frenchwomen of colour, natheless all the serious disadvantages of making love when in a profuse state of perspiration to a pale damsel who could, to all appearance, remain cool as a cucumber, when the thermometer stood at ninety in the shade, and her European swain was in a melting mood in more ways than one.

Some time before, when Smith was quartered in Jamaica, Kingston had been full of French royalist emigrants or fugitives from the Antilles; and many of these, from being persons of opulence and good position, by their flight and loss of fortune, had been reduced to extreme penury. Most of these emigrants were from Martinique, Marigalante, and Los Santos; but by far the greater number were from Hispaniola. Among those from the latter island, were M. du Plessis, (brother of the colonel whose capture I have just related) and his daughter, Aurore, with a few servants in whom he confided, or who choose to follow his fallen fortune. After his arrival, these were forced, by the pressure of circumstances, to leave him, all, save one, named Scipio, a gigantic negro, to whom he was much attached, although a subtle savage, who, for a time, had served in the coloured bands of Bellegarde and Pelocque.

Aurore was a French girl who possessed a delicacy of beauty that seldom falls to the lot of her countrywomen; but a West-Indian sun often works wonders, for although barely sixteen, she was "rich in all the fascinations of tropical girlishness;" and unmelted by the fiery skies of those regions, her cheeks wore a tinge of red, and ripe as those of any English girl at home; but much of the beauty of Aurore was inherited from her mother, who was descended from the old Spanish settlers in Hispaniola.

In Kingston, the lively little French beauty had many admirers, but she preferred to all others Harry Smith, of the Scots Royals, whose handsome figure and face were displayed to advantage by his brilliant staff uniform. He had fine dark eyes, which generally played the deuce with ladies, who always averred they beheld "in them a deep expression of tenderness not to be described," and so forth; yet I had seen them fiery and stern enough at such times as when the cannon ball from La Fleur d'Epée shaved off his epaulette and a slice off his shoulder with it. In short, he was the _beau idéal_ of a smart and gentlemanly young officer, without a vestige of the fop about him--for he had seen too much service during the six years he had been in the Royals--"too many hard knocks" as the mess-room phrase is--to be guilty of such folly; and so little Mademoiselle Aurore loved him with all her heart.

On his return to Jamaica, full of the ardour so natural to a young lover, Harry hastened to the house of M. du Plessis, but found, that though the letters of Aurore expressed an undiminished affection, a great change had taken place in the sentiments of the old planter, her father.

News (which, however, proved false) had arrived at Kingston, that the second division of the army from old France, destined to crush the insurgent slaves in the French Antilles, had reached the island of Hispaniola; and M. du Plessis, elated by the prospect of a restoration to fortune and to his extensive estates and plantations, now avowed that which hitherto he had the cunning or the wicked policy to conceal, a decided repugnance for Lieutenant Smith, and refused to permit Aurore to receive his visits.

Harry was as if thunder-struck! He sued, he entreated, he stormed, and poor Aurore was in despair. She wept and prayed, but M. du Plessis remained as inexorable as any father in an old melodrama, and embarked on board of a ship sailing under a cartel, with his wife, his property, and all his black servants whom he had collected--the faithful Scipio included. Poor Harry sprang into a boat, and though still suffering from the effects of his wound, reached the ship, which was then almost ready for sea, and lay in the harbour of Kingston, with her cable hove short upon the anchor, her courses loose, and blue-peter flying at the fore.

With her face covered by a veil, Aurore was seated on the deck; her head reclined upon her mother's breast, and she wept as if her heart was breaking.

Harry approached again; desperation lent him an eloquence that he knew not he possessed, and he urged his suit with the bearing of a gentleman, and with passion, truth, and tenderness. Du Plessis stood with arms folded, and, after hearing him in contemptuous silence--for he seemed to exult in his power to crush and mortify a Briton--ordered him at once to leave the ship, and added some coarse and ungenerous reflections on his country, and on his faith as a Protestant. Finding that pathos and argument alike proved futile, Harry became filled by a sudden fury, and unsheathed his sword.

"Listen to me, Monsieur du Plessis, you are both insolent and hard of heart," he exclaimed; "nothing but the love I bear Aurore, and the respect I am forced to have for you as _her_ father, prevents me from running you through the body and killing you on the spot! You will tear her from me--my dear, dear Aurore! Be it so; but thus shall she see that I can never survive her loss!"

With these words, the desperate fellow dashed his sword at the feet of the startled planter, and springing overboard, sank instantly.

Boats were promptly lowered to pick him up, but he never rose again.*

* "His unfortunate father, who was in Kingston, when the news reached him, in vain offered a reward of £200 to any person who would bring him the body of his son; but it was never found."--_Scottish Reg._ 1794.

Aurore was borne to her cabin in a state of alternate insensibility and delirium, and in this condition she continued, when, on the evening of the third day, while the mountains of Hispaniola were in sight, Scipio and the other domestics, armed with knives, rose suddenly in the twilight, and, with circumstances of dreadful barbarity, murdered every white person on board, except the miserable girl on whom the "faithful" Scipio pounced as his own particular prey. The negroes then plundered and set fire to the ship, and, leaving the corpses to the spreading flames, went ashore in the largest boat, and, taking Aurore with them, joined the revolted slaves who were still in arms, and who, since the massacre of the whites in August, 1791, had made that beautiful isle a scene of death and desolation.

From that night all trace was lost for ever of the unfortunate Mademoiselle du Plessis.