Chapter XVII: The Third Cruise of the Wave (1)

‘Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean-roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain:
Man marks the earth with ruin--his control
Stops with the shore,--upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man’s ravage, save his own,
When for a moment, like a drop of rain
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell’d, uncoffin’d, and unknown.

Byron, Childe Harold, IV 1603--11.

I had been invited to breakfast on board the corvette, on the morning after this; and Captain Transom, Mr Bang, and myself, were comfortably seated at our meal on the quarterdeck, under the awning, skreened off by flags from the view of the men. The ship was riding to a small westerly breeze, that was rippling up the bight. The ports on each quarter, as well as the two in the stern, were open, through which we had an extensive view of Port-au-Prince, and the surrounding country.

“Now, Transom,” said our amigo Massa Aaron, “I am quite persuaded that the town astern of us there must always have been, and is now, exceedingly unhealthy. Only reflect on its situation; it fronts the west, with the hot sickening afternoon’s sun blazing on it every evening, along the glowing mirror of the calm bight, under whose influence the fat black mud that composes the beach must send up most pestilent effluvia; while in the forenoon it is shut out from the influence of the regular easterly sea-breeze, or trade-wind, by the high land behind. However, as I don’t mean to stay here longer than I can help, it is not my affair; and as Mr. S----will be waiting for us, pray order your carriage, my dear fellow, and let us go on shore.”

The carriage our friend spoke of, was the captain’s gig, by this time alongside, ready manned, each of the six seamen who composed her crew, with his oar resting between his knees, the blade pointed upwards towards the sky. We all go in “Shove off” dip fell the oars into the water “Give way, men” the good ash staves groaned, and cheeped, and the water buzzed, and away we shot towards the wharf. We landed, and having proceeded to Mr S---‘s, we found horses ready for us, to take our promised ride into the beautiful plain of the Cul de Sac, lying to the northward and eastward of the town; the cavalcade being led by Massa Aaron and myself, while Mr S----rode beside Captain Transom.

Aforetime, from the estates situated on this most magnificent plain, (which extends about fifteen miles into the interior, while its width varies from ten to five miles, being surrounded by hills on three sides,) there used to be produced no less than thirty thousand hogsheads of sugar. This was during the ancient regime; whereas, now, I believe, the only articles it yields beyond plantains, yams, and pot herbs for the supply of the town, are a few gallons of syrup, and a few puncheons of tafla, a very inferior kind of rum. The whole extent of the sea like plain, for there is throughout scarcely any inequality higher than my staff, was once covered with well-cultivated fields and happy homes; but now, alas! with brushwood from six to ten feet high,--in truth, by one sea of jungle, through which you have to thread your difficult way along narrow, hot, sandy bridle-paths, (with the sand flies and musquittoes flaying you alive,) which every now and then lead you to some old ruinous court-yard, with the ground strewed with broken boilers and mill-rollers, and decaying hardwood timbers, and crumbling bricks; while, a little further on, you shall find the blackened roofless walls of what was most probably an unfortunate planter’s once happy home, where the midnight brigand came and found peace and comfort, and all the elegancies of life, and left-blood and ashes; with the wild flowers growing on the window sills, and the prickly pear on the tops of the walls, while marble steps, and old shutters, and window hinges, and pieces of china, are strewn all about; the only tenant now being most likely an old miserable negro who has sheltered himself in a coarsely thatched hut, in a corner of what had once been a gay and well furnished saloon.

After having extended our ride, under a hot broiling sun, until two o’clock in the afternoon, we hove about, and returned towards the town. We had not ridden on our homeward journey above three miles, when we overtook a tall good-looking negro, dressed in white Osnaburg trowsers, rolled up to his knees, and a check shirt. He wore neither shoes nor stockings, but his head was bound round with the usual handkerchief, over which he wore a large glazed cocked hat, with a most conspicuous Haytian blue-and-red cockade. He was goading on a jackass before him, loaded with a goodly burden apparently; but what it was we could not tell, as the whole was covered by a large sheepskin, with the wool outermost. I was pricking past the man, when Mr S----sung out to me to shorten sail, and the next moment he startled me by addressing the pedestrian as Colonel Gabaroche. The colonel returned the salute, and seemed in no way put out from being detected in this rather unmilitary predicament. He was going up to Port-au-Prince to take his turn of duty with his regiment. Presently up came another half-naked black fellow, with the same kind of glazed hat and handkerchief under it; but he was mounted, and his nag was not a bad one by any means. It was Colonel Gabaroche’s Captain of Grenadiers, Papotiere by name. He was introduced to us, and we all moved jabbering along. At the time I write of, the military force of the Haytian Republic was composed of one third of the whole male population capable of bearing arms, which third was obliged to be on permanent duty for four months every year; but the individuals of the quota were allowed to follow their callings as merchants, planters, or agriculturists, during the remaining eight months; they were, I believe, fed by Government during their four months of permanent duty. The weather, by the time we had ridden a couple of miles farther, began to lower, and presently, large heavy drops of rain fell, and preserving their globular shape, rolled like peas, or rather like bullets, amidst the small finely pulverized dust of the sandy path. “Umbrella” was the word--but this was a luxury unknown to our military friends. However, the colonel immediately unfurled a blanket from beneath the sheepskin, and sticking his head through a hole in the centre of it, there he stalked like a herald in his tabard, with the blanket hanging down before and behind him. As for the captain he dismounted, disencumbered himself of his trowsers, which he crammed under the mat that served him for a saddle, and taking off his shirt, he stowed it away in the capacious crown of his cocked hat, while he once more bestrid his Bucephalus in puris naturalibus, but conversing with all the ease in the world, and the most perfect sangfroid, while the thunder shower came down in bucketfuls. In about half an hour, we arrived at the skirt of the brushwood or jungle, and found on our left hand some rice fields, which from appearance we could not have distinguished from young wheat; but on a nearer approach, we perceived that the soil, if soil it could be called on which there was no walking, was a soft mud, the only passages through the fields, and along the ridges, being by planks, on which several of the labourers were standing as we passed, one of whom turning to look at us, slipped off, and instantly sunk amidst the rotten slime up to his waist. The neighbourhood of these rice swamps is generally extremely unhealthy. At length we got on board the Firebrand, drenched to the skin, to a late dinner, after which it was determined by Captain Transom--of which intention, by the by, with all his familiarity, I had not the smallest previous notice--that I should cross the island to Jacmel, in order to communicate with the merchant-ships loading there; and by the time I returned, it was supposed the Firebrand would be ready for sea, when I was to be detached in the Wave, to whip in the craft at the different out ports, after which we were all to sail in a fleet to Port Royal.

“I say, skipper,” quoth Mr Bang, “I have a great mind to ride with Tom what say you?”

“Why, Aaron, you are using me ill; that shaver is seducing you altogether; but come, you won’t be a week away, and if you want to go, I see no objection.”

It was fixed accordingly, and on the morrow Mr Bang and I completed our arrangements, hired horses, and a guide, and all being in order, clothes packed, and every thing else made ready for the cruise, we rode out along with Mr S----(we were to dine and sleep at his house) to view the fortifications on the hill above the town, the site of Christophe’s operations when he besieged the place; and pretty hot work they must have had of it, for in two different places the trenches of the besiegers had been pushed on to the very crest of the glacis, and in one the counterscarp had been fairly blown into the ditch, disclosing the gallery of the mine behind, as if it had been a cave, the crest of the glacis having remained entire. We walked into it, and Mr S----pointed out where the President’s troops, in Fort Republicain, had countermined, and absolutely entered the other chamber from beneath, after the explosion, and, sword in hand, cut off the storming party, (which had by this time descended into the ditch,) and drove them up through the breach into the fort, where they were made prisoners.

The assault had been given three times in one night, and he trembled for the town; however, Petion’s courage and indomitable resolution saved them all. For by making a sally from the south gate at grey dawn, even when the firing on the hill was hottest, and turning the enemy’s flank, he poured into the trenches, routed the covering party, stormed the batteries, spiked the guns, and that evening’s sun glanced on the bayonets of King Henry’s troops as they raised the siege, and fell back in great confusion on their lines, leaving the whole of their battering train, and a great quantity of ammunition, behind them.

Next morning we were called at daylight, and having accoutred ourselves for the journey, we descended and found two stout ponies, the biggest not fourteen hands high, ready saddled, with old fashioned demi piques, and large holsters at each of the saddlebows. A very stout mule was furnished for Monsieur Pegtop; and our black guide, who had contracted for our transit across the island, was also in attendance, mounted on a very active, well-actioned horse. We had coffee, and started. By the time we reached Leogane, the sun was high and fierce. Here we breakfasted in a low one--story building, our host being no smaller man than Major L----of the Fourth Regiment of the line. We got our chocolate, and eggs, and fricasseed fowl, and roasted yam, and in fact made, even according to friend Aaron’s conception of matters, an exceedingly comfortable breakfast.

Mr Bang here insisted on being paymaster, and tendered a sum that the black major thought so extravagantly great, considering the entertainment we had received, that he declined taking more than one half. However, Mr Bang, after several unavailing attempts to press the money on the man, who, by the by, was simply a good looking blackamoor, dressed in a check shirt, coarse but clean white duck trowsers, with the omnipresent handkerchief bound round his head, and finding that he could not persist without giving offence, was about pocketing the same, when Pegtop audibly whispered him, “Massa, you ever shee black niger refuse money before? but don’t take it to heart, massa; me, Pegtop, will pocket him, if dat foolis black person won’t.”

“Thank you for nothing, Master Pegtop,” said Aaron.

We proceeded, and rode across the beautiful plain, gradually sloping up from the mangrove--covered beach, until it swelled into the first range of hills that formed the pedestal of the high precipitous ridge that intersected the southern prong of the island, winding our way through the ruins of sugar plantations, with fragments of the machinery and implements employed in the manufacture scattered about, and half sunk into the soil of the fields, which were fast becoming impervious jungle, and interrupting our progress along the narrow bridle-paths. At length we began to ascend, and the comparative coolness of the climate soon evinced that we were rapidly leaving the hot plains, as the air became purer, and thinner, at every turn. After a long, hot, hot ride, we reached the top of the ridge, and turning back had a most magnificent view of the whole Bight of Leogane, and of the Horseshoe, and Aaron’s Frog; even the tops of the mountains above the Mole, which could not have been nearer than seventy miles, were visible, floating like islands or blue clouds in the misty distance. Aaron took off his hat, reined up, and turning the head of his Bucephalus towards the placid waters we had left, stretched forth his hand:

‘Ethereal air, and ye swift-winged winds,
Ye rivers springing from fresh founts, ye waves
That o’er the interminable ocean wreathe
Your crisped smiles, thou all-producing Earth,
And thee, bright Sun, I call, whose flaming orb
Views the wide world beneath. See!’

Nearly got a stroke of the sun, Tom--what Whiffle would call a cul de sac by taking off my chapeau in my poetical frenzy so shove on.

We continued our journey through most magnificent defiles, and under long avenues of the most superb trees, until, deeply embosomed in the very heart of the eternal forest, we came to a shady clump of bamboos, overhanging, with their ostrich-feather-like plumes, a round pool of water, mantled or creamed over with a bright green coating, as if it had been vegetable velvet, but nothing akin to the noisome scum that ferments on a stagnant pool in England. It was about the time we had promised ourselves dinner, and in fact our black guide and Pegtop had dismounted, to make their preparations.

“Why, we surely cannot dine here? you don’t mean to drink of that stagnant pool, my dear sir?”

“Siste paulisper, my boy,” said Mr Bang, as he stooped down, and skimmed off the green covering with his hand, disclosing the water below, pure and limpid as a crystal-clear fountain. We dined on the brink, and discussed a bottle of vin-de-grave a-piece, and then had a small pull at brandy and water; but we ate very little, although I was very hungry, but Mr Bang would not let me feed largely.

“Now, Tom, you really do not understand things. When one rides a goodish journey on end--say seventy miles or so--on the same horse, one never feeds the trusty creature with half a bushel of oats; at least if any wooden spoon does, the chances are he knocks him up. No, no--you give him a mouthful of corn, but plenty to drink, little meal and water here, and a bottle of porter in water there, and he brings you in handsomely. Zounds! how would you yourself, Tom, like to dine on turtle soup and venison, in the middle of a hissing hot ride of sixty miles, thirty of them to be covered after the feed? Lord! what between the rich food and the punch, you would have fermented like a brewer’s vat before you reached the end of the journey; and if you had not a boll imperial measure of carbonate of soda with you, the chances are you would explode like a catamaran, your head flying through some old woman’s window, and capsizing her teapot on the one hand, while on the other your four quarters are scattered north, south, east, and west. But Gaudeamus, sweet is pleasure after pains Tom, and all you sailors and tailors--I love to class you together--are tender--not hearted creatures. Strange now that there should be three classes of his Majesty’s subjects, who never can be taught to ride,--to whom riding is, in fact, a physical impossibility; and these three are the aforesaid sailors and tailors, and dragoon officers. However, hand me the brandy bottle; and, Pegtop, spate me that black jack that you are rinsing--so. Useful commodity, a cup of this kind.” here our friend dashed in a large qualifier of cognac, “it not only conceals the quality of the water, for you can sometimes perceive the animalculae hereabouts without a microscope, but also the strength of the libation. So--a piece of biscuit now, and the smallest morsel of that cold tongue--your health, Thomas”--a long pull--“speedy promotion to you, Thomas.” Here our friend rested the jug on his knee. “Were you ever at a Gaudeamus of Presbyterian clergymen on the Monday after the Sacrament Sunday, Tom, that is, at the dinner at the manse?”

“No, my dear sir; you know I am an Episcopalian.”

“And I am a Roman Catholic. What then? I have been at a Gaudeamus, and why might not you have been at one too? Oh the fun of such a meeting! the feast of reason, and the flow of Ferintosh, I and the rich stories, ay, fatter than ever I would venture on, and the cricket-like chirps of laughter of the probationer, and the loud independent guffaw of the placed minister, and the sly innuendos about the land round the Jordan, when our freens get half foo. Oh how I honour a Gaudeamus! And why,” he continued, “should the excellent men not rejoice, Tom? Are they not the very men who should be happy? Is a minister to be for ever boxed up in his pulpit--for ever to be wagging his pow, bald, black, or grizzled as it may be, beneath his sounding board, like a bullfrog below a toadstool. And like the aforesaid respectable quadruped or biped (it has always puzzled me which to call it), is he never to drink any thing stronger than water? Hath not a minister eyes? hath not a minister hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, that another man is? If you prick them, do they not bleed? If you tickle them, do they not laugh? And shall we grudge them a Caudeamus now and then? Shall opera peracta ludemus be in the mouths of an mankind, from the dirty little greasy-faced schoolboy, who wears a red gown and learns the Humanities and Whiggery in the Nineveh of the West, I as the Bailie glories to call it, to the King upon his throne, and a dead letter, as well as a dead language, to them, and them only? Forbid it, the Honourable the Lord Provost--forbid it, the Honourable the Lord Provost and all the Bailies, and those who sit in Council with them! Forbid it,--the whole august aggregate of terror to evildoers, and praise of them who do well! Forbid it, the Devil and Dr Faustus!”

By this time I had smuggled the jug out of our amigo’s claw, and had done honour to his pledge. “Do you know, my dear Mr Bang, I have always been surprised that a man of your strong intellect, and clear views of most matters, should continue, in profession at least, a Roman Catholic?”

Aaron looked at me with a seriousness, an unaffected seriousness in his manner, that possessed me with the notion that I had taken an unwarrantable liberty. “Profession,” at length said he, slowly and deliberately, apparently weighing every word carefully as it fell from him, as one is apt to do when approaching an interesting subject, on which you desire not to be misunderstood--“Profession--what right have you to assume this of me or any man, that my mode of faith is but profession?” and then the kind-hearted fellow, perceiving that his rebuke had mortified me, altering his tone, continued, but still with a strong tinge of melancholy in his manner--“Alas! Tom, how often will weak man, in his great arrogance, assume the prerogative of his Maker, and attempt to judge--honestly, we will even allow, according to his conception--of the heart and secret things of another, but too often, in reality, by the evil scale of his own! Shall the potsherd say to his frail fellow, Thou art weak, but I am strong? Shall the moudiewort say to his brother mole--(I say, Quashie, mind that mule of yours don’t snort in the water, will ye?)--Blind art thou, but lo, I see? Ah, Tom, I am a Roman Catholic; but is it thou who shalt venture down into the depths of my heart, and then say, whether I be so in profession only, or in stern unswerving sincerity?”

I found I had unwittingly touched a string that vibrated to his heart. “I am a Roman Catholic, but, I humbly trust, not a bigoted one; for were it not against the canons of both our churches, I fear I should incline to the doctrine of Pope.”

‘He can’t be wrong whose life is in the right.’

“My fathers, Tom, were all Catholics before me; they may have been wrong; but I am only my father’s son--not a better, and, I fear, I fear, not so wise a man.--Pray, Tom, did you ever hear of even a good Jew, who, being converted, did not become a bad Christian? Have you not all your life had a repugnance to consort with a sinner converted from the faith of his fathers, whether they were Jews or Gentiles, Hindoos or Mahomedans, dwellers in Mesopotamia, or beyond Jordan? You have such a repugnance, Tom, I know; and I have it too.”

“Well,” I proceeded, on the strength of the brandy grog, “in the case of an unenlightened, or ignorant, or half-educated man, I might indeed suspect duplicity, or even hypocrisy, at the bottom of the abjuration of his fathers creed; but in a gentleman of your acquirements and knowledge....”

“There again now, Cringle, you are wrong. The clodhopper might be conscientious in a change of creed, but as to the advantage I have over him from superior knowledge!--Knowledge, Tom! what do I know--what does the greatest and the best of us know--to venture on a saying somewhat of the tritest--but that he knows nothing? Oh, my dear boy, you and I have hitherto consorted together on the deck of life, so to speak, with the bright joyous sun sparkling, and the blue heavens laughing overhead, and the clear green sea dancing under foot, and the merry breeze buzzing past us right cheerily. We have seen but the fair-weather side of each other, Thomas, without considering that all men have their deep feelings, that lie far, far down in the hold of their hearts, were they but stirred up. Ay, you smile at my figures, but I repeat it--in the deep hold of their hearts; and may I not follow out the image with verity and modesty, and say that those feelings, often too deep for tears, are the ballast that keeps the whole ship in trim, and without which we should be every hour of our existence liable to be driven out of our heavenward course, yea, to broach--to and founder, and sink for ever, under one of the many squalls in this world of storms? And here, in this most beautiful spot, with the deep, dark, crystal-clear pool at our feet, fringed with the velvet grass, and the green quivering leaf above flickering between us and the bright blue cloudless sky, and the everlasting rocks, with those diamond-like tears trickling down their rugged cheeks, impending over us,--and those gigantic gnarled trees, with their tracery of black withes fantastically tangled, whose naked roots twist and twine amongst the fissures, like serpents trying to shelter themselves from the scorching rays of the vertical sun, and those feather-like bamboos high arching overhead, and screening us under their noble canopy,--and the cool plantains, their broad ragged leaves bending under the weight of dew-spangles, and the half-opened wild-flowers,--yea, even here, the ardent noontide sleeping on the hill, when even the quickeyed lizard lies still, and no longer rustles through the dry grass, and there is not a breath of air strong enough out of heaven to stir the gossamer that floats before us, or to wave that wild flower on its hair like stem, or to ruffle the fairy plumage of the humming-bird, that, against the custom of its kind, is now quietly perched thereon; and while the bills of the chattering paroquets, that are peering at us from the branches above, are closed, and the woodpecker interrupts his tapping to look down upon us, and the only sound we hear is the moaning of the wood-pigeon, and the lulling buzz of myriads of happy insects booming on the ear, loud as the rushing of a distant waterfall--(Confound these musquittoes, though!)--Even here, on this:”

‘So sweet a spot of earth, you might, I ween, Have guessed some congregation of the elves, To sport by summer moons, had shaped it for themselves.’

Even in such a place could I look forward without a shudder, to set up my everlasting rest, to lay my weary bones in the earth, and to mingle my clay with that whereout it was moulded. No fear of being houcked here, Thomas, and preserved in a glass case, like a stuffed woodcock, in Surgeons Hall. I am a barbarian, Tom, in these respects--I am a barbarian, and nothing of a philosopher. Quiero Paz is to be my epitaph. Quiero Paz--‘Cursed be he who stirs these bones.’ Did not even Shakspeare write it? What poetry in this spot, Thomas! Oh,

‘There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.’

“Yes, even here where nature is all beautiful and every thing, and man abject and nothing even here, Tom, amidst the loneliness of earth, rugged and half-mad as you must sometimes have thought me, a fellow wholly made up of quips and jests,--even I at this moment could, like an aboriginal Charibl of the land, ‘lift up my voice to the Great Spirit,’ and kneel, and weep, and pray.”

I was much moved.

“You have spoken of knowledge, Tom. Knowledge--what do I know? Of myself I know as little as I do of any other grub that crawls on the surface of this world of sin and suffering; and what I do know, adds little to my self-esteem, Tom, and affords small encouragement to enquire further.--Knowledge, say you? How is that particle of sand here? I cannot tell. How grew that blade of grass? I do not know. Even when I look into that jug of brandy grog, (I’ll trouble you for it, Thomas,) all that I know is, that if I drink it, it will make me drunk, and a more desperately wicked creature, if that were possible, than I am already. And when I look forth on the higher and more noble objects of the visible creation, abroad on this beautiful earth, above on the glorious universe studded with shining orbs, without number numberless, what can I make of them? Nothing absolutely nothing--yet they are all creatures like myself. But--if I try--audaciously try--to strain my finite faculties, in the futile attempt to take in what is infinite--if I aspiringly, but hopelessly, grapple with the idea of the immensity of space, for instance, which my reason yet tells me must of necessity be boundless--do I not fall fluttering to the earth again, like an owl flying against the noontide sun? Again, when I venture to think of eternity--ay, when, reptile as I feel myself to be, I even look up towards heaven, and bend my erring thoughts towards the Most High, the Maker of all things, who was, and is, and is to come; whose flaming minister, even while I speak, is pouring down a flood of intolerable day on one half of the dry earth, and all that therein is; and when I reflect on what this tremendous, this inscrutable Being has done for me and my sinful race, so beautifully shown forth in both our creeds, what do I know? but that I am a poor miserable worm, crushed before the moth, whose only song should be the miserere, whose only prayer ‘God be merciful to me a sinner!”

There was a long pause, and I began to fear that my friend was shaken in his mind, for he continued to look steadfastly into the clear black water, where he had skimmed off the green velvet coating with his stick.

“Ay, and is it even so? and is it Tom Cringle who thinks and says that I am a man likely to profess to believe what he knows in his heart to be a lie? A Roman Catholic! Had I lived before the Roman Conquest I would have been a Druid, for it is not under the echoing domes of our magnificent cathedrals, with all the grandeur of our ritual, the flaming tapers, and bands of choristers, and the pealing organ, and smoking censers, and silver-toned bells, and white-robed priests, that the depths of my heart are stirred up. It is here, and not in a temple made with hands, however gorgeous--here, in the secret places of the everlasting forest,--it is in such a place as this that I feel the immortal spark within me kindling into a flame, and wavering up heavenward. I am superstitious, Thomas, I am superstitious, when left alone in such a scene as this. I can walk through a country churchyard at midnight, and stumble amongst the rank grass that covers the graves of those I have lived with and loved, even if they be ‘green in death, and festering in their shrouds,’ with the wind moaning amongst the stunted yew-trees, and the rain splashing and scattering on the moss covered tombstones, and the blinding blue lightning flashing, while the headstones glance like an array of sheeted ghosts, and the thunder is grumbling overhead, without a qualm-direness of this kind cannot once daunt me; it is here and now, when all nature sleeps in the ardent noontide, that I become superstitious, and would not willingly be left alone. Thoughts too deep for tears!--ay, indeed, and there be such thoughts, that, long after time has allowed them to subside, and when, to the cold eye of the world, all is clear and smooth above, will, when stirred up, like the sediment of this fountain of the wood, discolour and embitter the whole stream of life once more, even after the lapse of long long years. When my heart crushing loss was recent--when the wound was green, I could not walk abroad at this to me witching time of day, without a stock or a stone, a distant mark on the hill-side, or the outline of the grey cliff above, taking the very fashion of her face, or figure, on which I would gaze, and gaze, as if spell-bound, until I knew not whether to call it a grouping of the imagination, or a reality from without--or her, with whom I fondly hoped to have travelled the weary road of life. Friends approved--fortune smiled--one little month, and we should have been one; but it pleased Him, to whom in my present frame of mind I dare not look up, to blight my beautiful flower, to canker my rose-bud, to change the fair countenance of my Elizabeth, and send her away. She drooped and died, even like that pale flower under the scorching sun; and I was driven forth to worship Mammon, in these sweltering climes; but the sting remains, the barbed arrow sticks fast.”

Here the cleared surface of the water, into which he was steadfastly looking, was gradually contracted into a small round spot about a foot in diameter, by the settling back of the green floating matter that he had skimmed aside. His countenance became very pale; he appeared even more excited than he had hitherto been.

“By heavens! look in that water, if the green covering of it has not arranged itself round the clear spot into the shape of a medallion into her features! I had dreamed of such things before, but now it is a palpable reality--it is her face--her straight nose--her Grecian upper lip--her beautiful forehead, and her very bust!--even,”

‘As when years apace had bound her lovely waist with woman’s zone.’

“Oh, Elizabeth--Elizabeth!”

Here his whole frame shook with the most intense emotion, but at length, tears, unwonted tears, did come to his relief, and he hid his face in his hands, and wept bitterly. I was now convinced he was mad, but I durst not interrupt him. At length he slowly removed his hands, by which time, however, a beautiful small black diver, the most minute species of duck that I ever saw--it was not so big as my fist--but which is common in woodland ponds in the West Indies, had risen in the centre of the eye of the fountain, while all was so still that it floated quietly like a leaf on the water, apparently without the least fear of us.

“The devil appeared in Paradise under the shape of a cormorant,” said Mr Bang, half angrily, as he gazed sternly at the unlooked for visitor; “what imp art thou?”

Tip--the little fellow dived; presently it rose again in the same place, and lifting up its little foot, scratched the side of its tiny yellow bill and little red-spotted head, shook its small wings, bright and changeable as shot silk, with a snow-white pen-feather in each, and then tipped up its little purple tail, and once more disappeared.

Aaron’s features were gradually relaxing; a change was coming over the spirit of his dream. The bird appeared for the third time, looked him in the face, first turning up one little sparkling eye, and then another, with its neck changing its hues like a pigeon’s. Aaron began to smile; he gently raised his stick--“Do you cock your fud at me, you tiny thief, you?”--and thereupon he struck at it with his stick. Tip the duck dived, and did not rise again; and all that he got was a sprinkling shower in the face, from the water flashing up at his blow, and once more the green covering settled back again, and the bust of his dead love, or what he fancied to be so, disappeared. Aaron laughed outright, arose, and began to shout to the black guide, who, along with Pegtop, had taken the beasts into the wood in search of provender. “Ayez le bont de donnez moi mon cheval? Bring us the horsos, Massa Bungo-venga los quadrupedos--make haste, vite, mucho, mucho.”

Come, there is my Massa Aaron once more, at all events, thought I; but oh, how unlike the Aaron of five minutes ago!

“So now let us mount, my boy,” said he, and we shoved along until the evening fell, and the sun bid us good-by very abruptly. “Cheep, Cheep,” sung the lizards--“chirp, chirp,” sung the crickets, “snore, snore,” moaned the tree-toad--and it was night.

“Dame Nature shifts the scene without much warning here, Thomas,” said Massa Aaron; “we must get along, Doechez, mon cher--doechez, diggez votre spurs into the flankibus of votre cheval, mon ami,” shouted Aaron to our guide.

“Oui, monsieur,” replied the man, ‘mais’

I did not like this ominous “but,” nevertheless we rode on. No more did Massa Aaron. The guide repeated his mais again. “Mais, mon filo,” said Bang, “mais--que meanez vous by baaing comme un sheep, eh? Que vizzy vous, eh?”

We were at this time riding in a bridle-road, to which the worst sheep paths in Westmoreland would have been a railway, with our horses every now and then stumbling and coming down on their noses on the deep red earth, while we as often stood a chance of being pitched bodily against some tree on the path-side. But we were by this time all alive again, the dullness of repletion having evaporated; and Mr Bang, I fancied, began to peer anxiously about him, and to fidget a good deal, and to murmur and grumble something in his gizzard about “arms--no arms,” as, feeling in his starboard holster, he detected a regular long cork of claret, where he had hoped to clutch a pistol, while in the larboard, by the praiseworthy forethought of our guide, a good roasted capon was ensconced. “I say, Tom tohoo mind I don’t shoot you,” presenting the bottle of claret. “If it had been soda water, and the wire not all the stronger, I might have had a chance in this climate--but we are somewhat caught here, my dear we have no arms.”

“Poo,” said I, “never mind--no danger at hand, take my word for it.”

“May be not, may be not--but, Pegtop, you scoundrel, why did you not fetch my pistols?”

“Eigh, you go fight, massa?”

“Fight! no, you booby; but could not your own numscull--the fellow’s a fool--so come--ride on, ride on.”

Presently we came to an open space, free of trees, where the moon shone brightly; it was a round precipitous hollow, that had been excavated apparently by the action of a small clear stream or spout of water, that sparkled in the moonbeams like a web of silver tissue, as it leaped in a crystal arch over our heads from the top of a rock about twenty feet high, that rose on our right hand, the summit clearly and sharply defined against the blue firmament, while, on the left, was a small hollow or ravine, down which the rivulet gurgled and vanished; while ahead the same impervious forest prevailed, beneath which we had been travelling for so many hours.

The road led right through this rugged hollow, crossing it about the middle, or, if any thing, nearer the base of the cliff; and the whole clear space between the rock and the branches of the opposite trees might have measured twenty yards. In front of us, the path took a turn to the left, as if again entering below the dark shadow of the wood; but towards the right, with the moon shining brightly on it, there was a most beautiful bank, clear of underwood, and covered with the finest short velvet grass that could be dreamed of as a fitting sward to be pressed by fairy feet. We all halted in the centre of the open space.

“See how the moonlight sleeps on yonder bank!” said I.

“I don’t know what sleeps there, Tom,” said Aaron; “but does that figure sleep, think you?” pointing to the dark crest of the precipitous eminence of the right hand, from which the moonlight rill was gushing, as if it had been smitten by the rod of the Prophet.

I started, and looked--a dark half--naked figure, with an enormous cap of the shaggy skin of some wild creature, was kneeling on one knee, on the very pinnacle with a carabine resting across his thigh. I noticed our guide tremble from head to foot, but he did not speak.

“Vous avez des arms?” said Bang, as he continued with great fluency, but little grammar; “ayez le bonte de cockez votre pistolettes?”

The man gave no answer. We heard the click of the carabine lock.

“Zounds!” said Aaron, with his usual energy when excited, “if you won’t use them, give them to me;” and forthwith he snatched both pistols from our guide’s holsters. “Now, Tom, get on. Shove t’other blackie a-head of you, Pegtop, will you? Confound you for forgetting my Mantons, you villain. I will bring up the rear.”

“Well, I will get on,” said I. “but here, give me a pistol.”

“Ridez vous en avant, blackimoribus ambos--en avant, you black rascals laissez le Capitan and me pour fightez”--shouted Bang, as the black guide, guessing his meaning, spurred his horse against the moonlight bank.

“Ah--ah!” exclaimed the man, as he wheeled about after he had ridden a pace or two under the shadow of the trees--“Voila ces autres brigands la.”

“Where?” said I.

“There,” said the man in an ecstasy of fear--“there”--and peering up into the forest, where the checkering dancing moonlight was flickering on the dun, herbless soil, as the gentle night-breeze made the leaves of the trees twinkle to and fro, I saw three dark figures advancing upon us.

“Here’s a catastrophe, Tom, my boy” quoth Aaron, who, now that he had satisfied himself that the pistols were properly loaded and primed, had resumed all his wonted coolness in danger. “Ask that fellow who is enacting the statue on the top of the rock what he wants. I am a tolerable shot, you know; and if he means evil, I shall nick him before he can carry his carabine to his shoulder, take my word for it.”

“Who is there, and what do you want?” No answer, the man above us continued as still as if he had actually been a statue of bronze. Presently one of the three men in the wood sounded a short snorting note on a bullock’s horn.

It would seem that until this moment their comrade above us had not been aware of their vicinity, for he immediately called out in the patois of St Domingo, “advance, and seize the travellers;” and thereupon was in the act of raising his piece to his shoulder, when crack--Bang tired his pistol. The man uttered a loud hah, but did not fall.

“Missed him, by all that is wonderful!” said my companion. “Now, Tom, it is your turn.”

I levelled, and was in the very act of pulling the trigger, when the dark figure fell over slowly and stiffly on his back, and then began to struggle violently, and to cough loudly, as if he were suffocating. At length he rolled over and down the face of the rock, where he was caught by a strong clump of brushwood, and there he hung, while the coughing and crowing increased, and I felt a warm shower, as of heated water, sputter over my face. It was hot hot and salt--God of my fathers! it was blood. But there was no time for consideration; the three figures by this had been reinforced by six more, and they now, with a most fiendish yell, jumped down into the hollow basin, and surrounded us.

“Lay down your arms,” one of them shouted.

“No,” I exclaimed; “we are British officers, and armed, and determined to sell our lives dearly; and if you do succeed in murdering us, you may rest assured you shall be hunted down by bloodhounds.”

I thought the game was up, and little dreamed that the name of Briton would, amongst the fastnesses of Haiti, have proved a talisman; but it did so. “We have no wish to injure you, but you must follow us, and see our general,” said the man who appeared to take the lead amongst them. Here two of the men scrambled up the face of the rock, and brought their wounded comrade down from where he hung, and laid him on the bank; he had been shot through the lungs, and could not speak. After a minute’s conversation, they lifted him on their shoulders; and as our guide and Monsieur Pegtop had been instantly bound, we were only two to nine armed men, and accordingly had nothing for it but to follow the bearers of the wounded man, with our horses tumbling and scrambling up the river course, into which, by their order, we had now turned.

We proceeded in this way for about half a mile, when it was evident that the jaded beasts could not travel farther amongst the twisted trunks of trees and fragments of rock with which the river-course was now strewed. We therefore dismounted, and were compelled to leave them in charge of two of the brigands, and immediately began to scramble up the hill-side, through a narrow footpath, in one of the otherwise most impervious thickets that I had ever seen. Presently a black savage, half-naked like his companions, hailed, and told us to stand. Some password that we could not understand was given by our captors, and we proceeded, still ascending, until, turning sharp off to the left, we came suddenly round a pinnacle of rock, and looked down into a deep dell, with a winding path leading to the brink of it. It was a round cockpit of a place, surrounded with precipitous limestone-rocks on all sides, from the fissures of which large trees and bushes sprung, while the bottom was a level piece of ground, covered with long hay-like grass, evidently much trodden down. Close to the high bank, right opposite, and about thirty yards from us, a wood-fire was sparkling cheerily against the grey rock; while, on the side next us, the roofs of several huts were visible, but there was no one moving about that we could see. The moment, however, that the man with the horn sounded a rough and most unmelodious blast, there was a buzz and a stir below, and many a short grunt arose out of the pit, and long yawns, and eigh, eighs! while a dozen splinters of resinous wood were instantly lit, and held aloft, by whose light I saw fifty or sixty half-naked, but well armed blacks, gazing up at us from beneath, their white eyes and whiter teeth glancing. Most of them had muskets and long knives, and several wore the military shake, while others had their heads bound round with the never-failing handkerchief. At length a fierce-looking fellow, dressed in short drawers, a round blue jacket, a pair of epaulets, and a most enormous cocked hat, placed a sort of rough ladder, a prank with notches cut in it with a hatchet, against the bank next us, and in a loud voice desired us to descend. I did so with fear and trembling, but Mr Bang never lost his presence of mind for a moment; and, in answer to the black chief’s questions, I again rested our plea on our being British officers, despatched on service from a squadron (and as I used the word, the poor little Wave and solitary corvette rose up before me) across the island to Jacmel, to communicate with another British force lying there. The man heard me with great patience; but when I looked round the circle of tatterdemalions, for there was ne’er a shirt in the whole company--Falstaff’s men were a joke to them--with their bright arms sparkling to the red glare of the torches, that flared like tongues of flame overhead, while they grinned with their ivory teeth, and glared fiercely with their white eyeballs on us--I felt that our lives were not worth an hour’s purchase.

At length the leader spoke--“I am General Sanchez, driven to dispute President Petion’s sway by his injustice to me--but I trust our quarrel is not hopeless; will you, gentlemen, on your return to Port-au-Prince, use your influence with him to withdraw his decree against me?”

This was so much out of the way the idea of our being deputed to mediate between such great personages as President Petion and one of his rebel generals, was altogether so absurd, that, under other circumstances, I would have laughed in the black fellow’s face. However, a jest here might have cost us our lives; so we looked serious, and promised.

“Upon your honours”--said the poor fellow.

“Upon our words of honour”--we rejoined.

“Then embrace me”--and the savage thereupon, stinking of tobacco and cocoa-nut oil, hugged me, and kissed me on both cheeks, and then did the agreeable in a similar way to Mr Bang. Here the coughing and moaning of the wounded man broke in upon the conference.

“What is that?” said Sanchez. One of his people told him. “Ah!” said he, with a good deal of savageness in his tone--“A--ha! blood?”

We promptly explained how it happened;--for a few moments, I did not know how he might take it.

“But I forgive you,” at length said he--“however, my men may revenge their comrade. You must drink and eat with them.”

This was said aside to us, as it were. He ordered some roasted plantains to be brought, and mixed some cruel bad tafia with water in an enormous gourd. He ate, and then took a pull himself we followed,--and he then walked round the circle, and carefully observed that every one had tasted also. Being satisfied on this head, he abruptly ordered us to ascend the ladder, and to pass on our way.

The poor fellow was mad, I believe. However, some time afterwards, the President hunted him down, and got hold of him, but I believe he never punished him. As for the wounded man, whether he did live or die, Tom Cringle does not know.

We were reconducted by our former escort to where we left our horses, remounted, and without farther let or hinderance arrived by day dawn at the straggling town of Jacmel. The situation is very beautiful, the town being built on the hillside, looking out seaward on a very safe roadstead, the anchorage being defended to the southward by bright blue shoals, and white breakers, that curl and roar over the coral reefs and ledges. As we rode up to Mr S----‘s, the principal merchant in the place, and a Frenchman, we were again struck with the dilapidated condition of the houses, and the generally ruinous state of the town. The brown and black population appeared to be lounging about in the most absolute idleness; and here, as at Port-au-Prince, every second man you met was a soldier. The women sitting in their little shops, nicely set out with a variety of gay printed goods, and the crews of the English vessels loading coffee, were the only individuals who seemed to be capable of any exertion.

“I say, Tom,” quoth Massa Aaron, “do you see that old fellow there?”

“What? that old grey-headed negro sitting in the arbour there?”

“Yes--the patriarch is sitting under the shadow of his own Lima bean.”

And so in very truth he was. The stem was three inches in diameter, and the branches had been trained along and over a sparred arch, and were loaded with pods.

“I shall believe in the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, henceforth and for ever,” said I.

We were most kindly entertained by Mr S----, and spent two or three days very happily. The evening of the day on which we arrived, we had strolled out about nine o’clock to take the air--our host and his clerks being busy in the counting-house--and were on our way home, when we looked in on them at their desks, before ascending to the apartments above. There were five clerks and Mr S----, all working away on the top of their tall mahogany tripods, by the light of their brown home-made wax candles, while three masters of merchantmen were sitting in a corner, comparing bills of lading, making up manifests, and I do not know what beside.

“It is now about time to close,” said Mr S----; “have you any objection to a little music, gentlemen? or are you too much fatigued?”

“Music--music,” said Mr Bang, “I delight in good music, but”--He was cut short by the whole bunch, the clerks and their master, closing their ledgers, and journals, and day-books, and cashbooks with a bang, while one hooked up a fiddle, another a clarionet, another a flute, &c, while Mr S----offered, with a smile, his own clarionet to Massa Aaron, and holding out at the same time, with the true good-breeding of a Frenchman, a span-new reed. To my unutterable surprise he took it sucked in his lips--wet the reed in his mouth; then passing his hand across his muzzle, coolly asked Mr S----what the piece was to be? “Adeste fideles, if you please,” said S----, rather taken aback. Mr Bang nodded--sounded a bar or two gave another very scientific flourish, and then calmly awaited the opening. He then tendered a fiddle to me altogether beyond my compass--but I offered to officiate on the kettledrum, the drummer being competent to something else. At a signal from our host away they all launched in full crash, and very melodious it was too, let me tell you, Aaron’s instrument telling most famously.