Chapter XXVIII: Land!

After this affair we all got on pleasantly enough; to the great satisfaction of the crew, the choleric captain was confined to his cabin, and the ship was commanded by Mr. Percival, the first-lieutenant. Few other incidents of interest occurred during the outward voyage, which by various delays, lasted about three months; for until we felt the influence of the trade wind, which seldom varies throughout the year--the same wind which, by its steadiness, excited the terror of the seamen of Columbus--we encountered very foul weather.

After a time, the wonders of the deep--the showers of flying-fish, the brown droves of shining porpoises surging through the sea--leaping as it were, from one watery slope to another--the huge whale rising up suddenly like an inverted ship, with the water pouring in a torrent from its slippery sides, spouting foam, or tossing its mighty tail in the air; the blue shark gliding stealthily along under the glossy surface of the calm sea, all ceased to excite interest, and the intense monotony of the voyage, together with the dull routine of duty, wearied me: thus, I can well recal the joy I felt, when one morning, about the end of April, Tom Telfer, who had been on the morning watch, pointed out to me, a number of strange birds, that were hovering among the far scattered ships of the fleet, while pieces of sugar-cane, melon and other tropical indications of the shore, floated past from time to time--a joy, only equalled by the disappointment I endured, when after a sudden cry of "land in sight," from the look-out man in the main-crosstrees, a low dark stripe was declared to be "only Cape Flyaway," which was slowly exhaled into the meredian sky, and melted without leaving a trace behind.

We were driven to the 40th degree of north latitude, and saw the volcanic hills of the Azores. I remember when at Guadaloupe, finding in a house when on a foraging party a curious history of the discovery of these isles, by Gonsalvo Velio, in 1449, in which there was a quaint and Gothic story of this adventurous voyager, perceiving the figure of a warrior on horseback on the summit of a rock overlooking the sea. "His left hand was on his horse's mane, and his right hand pointed to the west."

Startled on beholding such an apparition in a desolate island, Gonsalvo landed, and the figure was found to have turned into stone, and certain cabalistic characters were graven on the face of the rock before it.

We ran pretty close to St. Michael, the isle of oranges and most eastern of the group; and then, with all the fleet that were in sight, bore up for the island of Barbadoes, our point of rendezvous.

Ere this, I had already reaped a portion of the fruit of my steadiness, and attention to duty since my enlistment, and also of the good education bestowed upon me, by my kind mother, from whom I was now so far, far away.

"Once in the ranks--always in the ranks is the maxim of the British army," says a writer in 1857, who knows little about the matter; "a man who accepts the shilling from the recruiting sergeant, and fulfils an engagement made over his ale in a pot-house, bids adieu to all hope of raising in the military profession; he must give up all ambition, and seek what pleasure he can find in transient indulgences."

Even in the old times of which I write, we did not find ourselves thus degraded in the Scots Fusiliers; at least I--Oliver Ellis--found it otherwise, for old Captain Glendonwyn, after discovering my few qualifications, made me useful in keeping the books of his company; and the reader must remember that in those days of practical soldiering, very few non-commissioned officers could read or write. I could do both, and had also a smattering of French and Latin. Thus, I was considered a species of military prodigy; and when a fever, which broke out in the fleet on its reaching warmer latitudes, swept off several of our sergeants, I was promoted to one of the vacant halberts, and my heart expanded with hope, joy, and ambition, when Lord Kildonan, who, of course, remembered how I had saved him from Cranky's pistol, told me earnestly to continue to conduct myself with care, "and I might yet wear a pair of epaulettes as my father had done before me."

The deaths were so frequent, as to cast a permanent gloom over all on board; and I still recall the emotions of awe and repugnance, with which I saw each poor corse corded up in blankets and, with a cold shot at its heels, consigned to a grave in the brine, through which the sharks followed us with voracious obstinacy.

On the 3rd of March we saw land in earnest, and with three hearty cheers that rang from ship to ship, we hailed the fertile shores of Barbadoes.

As the fleet drew near, the undulating line of the island rose gradually from the deep resplendent blue of the Carribean sea, presenting an aspect of that surpassing verdure and fertility to be found in the tropics alone. The tall sugar-canes were swaying in the soft breeze that came from the ocean, and the groves of the plaintains, guavas, pineapples, orange, lime, and citron trees, all in their varied tints of green foliage and golden fruit, bounding flat green lawns or shading little villages, above which the sugar-mills were tossing their fanlike arms, made Barbadoes a charming scene to eyes that had gazed so long upon the changeless waste of sea and sky.

We ran into Carlisle Bay, and on Admiral Jervis's ship firing a gun, the whole fleet came to anchor in three lines; the courses were handed and the yards squared, while crowds of black-skinned and woolly-headed negroes came running out of the plantations to the shore to gaze at us; and numbers came off from the little bights and creeks in their piraguas or canoes, offering for sale pine-apples at a penny each, guavas, bananas, and monkeys to suck, (_i.e._, cocoanuts filled with rum). The _Adder_, with the head-quarters of the Fusileers, was the leading frigate of the leeward line, so we were less than a mile from the shore.

A boat was lowered at once to order various stores requisite for the ship. As it splashed into the water, I envied the middy who was to be the first that trod on terra firma.

"Now, Mr. Stanley," cried Percival the first lieutenant as he shoved off; "look out that your boat's crew don't suck the monkey, or by Heaven, youngster, I'll mast-head you for four-and-twenty hours."

On this day the captain appeared on deck for the first time since his duel. Lord Kildonan hastened to offer the assistance of his arm; which Cranky accepted with a better grace than we could have anticipated, but now their feud was at an end.

Now, my first thought was of _home_. How I longed to write the story of my long and tedious voyage; to ask forgiveness and a blessing from those I had left behind; but a knowledge of the difficulty which even officers experienced in the transmission of their letters in those days, made me cast aside, in a species of despair, the pen I had assumed, and I sought to forget my bitterness of heart in gazing on the green shore, and anticipating a release from the thraldom of the frigate.

An emotion of repugnance and alarm, thrilled through me, on seeing the number of sharks that played about in Carlisle bay. To me, it seemed as if all the sharks in the ocean were swarming in that small bight of deep blue water. The sailors averred that "they nosed the soldiers aboard," and knew well when a ship was crowded. One fact is certain, that they were wont to follow the slave-ships hither from the Guinea coast; and as deaths were frequent on board of such filthy and crowded craft, a day seldom passed without a body being tossed overboard, and we could see it rent to pieces under our eyes by those voracious monsters of the deep--for many slave-ships had come in under convoy and lay at anchor to leeward of the fleet; to windward, would not be tolerated.

In a very old folio history of Barbadoes, I remember my comrade, Tom Telfer, reading to me once, when sick in my hammock, the following singular episode concerning a shark in Carlisle Bay.

In the reign of Queen Anne, an old brig, of quaint aspect, high-pooped and low-waisted, named the _York Merchant_, Captain Jack Beams, commander, a letter-of-marque, pierced for ten guns, besides pateraroes (for, in those days, the Indian seas and the Florida Gulf were full of buccaniers) arrived at Barbadoes from England, and landed a cargo in Carlisle Bay. The warmth of the weather, together with the delightful blue of the deep water, tempted one of the seamen to leap overboard and bathe; but he was scarcely three fathoms from the ship, when there was a cry raised on board:--

"Look out--ware shark!" and an enormous blue one was seen, slowly but surely, with the wake of its body shining under the surface, to shoot towards him.

A sailor, who had a great regard for the luckless swimmer, as they were old friends and messmates, sprang into a boat alongside, and pushed off to his assistance; but the shark was quicker than he, and he arrived in time only to see the monster open its dreadful jaws, and cut fairly in two the body of his friend, as he raised himself shrieking from the bloody water. All the man below the waist was swallowed by the shark at a mouthful. The remainder was brought on board, to the horror and dismay of the crew. For more than an hour after this the insatiable shark was seen slowly swimming round the ship (against the sides of which the water rippled in bloody tints), as if waiting for the other half of his victim.

Many a musket-shot was discharged at him, but he escaped them all.

Enraged by this tenacity and temerity, the messmate of the dead man swore that he would have vengeance; and throwing off his clothes, ere he could be prevented, sprang into the water, armed with a long and sharp-pointed dagger, which he had lashed to his right hand by a lanyard. Even before his white body had risen to the surface, the shark was seen by the ship's crew, making slowly towards him, and they clambered into the rigging and ran out upon the studding-sail booms, where they gazed in breathless astonishment on a combat so unusual and terrific.

At the moment when the shark opened his dreadful jaws, the seaman, with a shout of triumph, dived below, and while grasping the monster's upper fin with his left hand, gave him three stabs in the belly with the dagger which armed his right.

Rendered furious on finding himself so skilfully combated in his own element, the shark plunged to the bottom, leaving the water crimsoned with blood and froth.

Once again he rose to the surface, and again the brave English mariner attacked him in the same manner, and repeated his stabs, until so much blood and foam covered the water, that the scared crew of the _York Merchant_ knew not which had the victory--the man or the giant-fish,--until they saw the dead carcass floating, like an inverted canoe, on the surface of the bay, when they hoisted their ensign, fired off their all pateraroes, and hailed the victor with three hearty cheers; thereafter, adds this quaint old book, he "by the help of an ebbing tide, drags the shark on shore, rips up his bowels, and unites and buries the severed carcass of his friend in one hospitable grave, on the shore of Carlisle Bay."

The evening on which we came to anchor there was beautiful; but a succession of such evenings soon ceases to excite comment in the tropics.

The round windsails rigged down every open hatchway, white and swelling, were conveying the cool fresh air into the deepest recesses of the frigate. Her ports triced up, gave, on one side, glimpses of cool and shady lime and orange groves; on the other, the colder blue of the Carribean Sea; yet the carronades, when one touched them, felt hot beneath the hand, for the burning heat of the breathless day that had passed, yet lingered about them. Alongside, the water rippled gently under the bends; and more than every minute, the dark fin of the blue shark--in those seas the most terrible of all its species--rose above the surface of the clear, deep water.

The sweep of Carlisle Bay, so named from the Earl of Carlisle, who obtained from Charles I. a grant of Barbadoes, as "absolute proprietor and lord of the Caribee isles," with the aspect of the capital, occupied me for some time, though the view was, perhaps, more pleasing than striking. It is named Bridgetown, from a bridge that once spanned a river which flowed into the bay, but which was choked or dried up before 1715. The British flag, always a pleasant feature in a foreign land, as it tells so much of home and safety, was flying above the Garrison,--an extensive range of edifices, at the southern horn of the bay; while the northern is occupied by a battery, the guns of which, peered over a ridge of low coral reefs, whereon the sea was breaking in white foam that sparkled in the light of the setting sun. Beyond, lay Fontabelle, of old the seat of the governors, embosomed among tall cocoanut-trees, the tufted heads of which were tossing their branches on the evening wind.

Sugar-mills, with huge revolving fans, and rows of giant cabbage-trees, broke the wavy sky-line; and from a distance, came, at times, the cheerful but guttural chant of the slimy-skinned and woolly-headed negroes, whose sole garments were, usually, a pair of white or yellow cotton breeches. On the wharfs, gangs of them were busy, under the sharp eye and sharper lash of overseers (attired in spotless white, with broad-leaved hats) hoisting or stowing sugars and other goods on board the shipping at the carenage and mole.

Next day most of the troops were disembarked. Some were placed under canvas at a part of the isle which, being mountainous, is named Scotland; a few were billeted, but the Fusileers had the good fortune to be placed in the garrison at Needham's Point, where Fort Charles, so named by exiled Cavaliers in honour of the first monarch of that name, was built in the days of old.

One requires to undergo the tedium of a long voyage to feel the joy of first stepping ashore.

"Now, here we are in the West Indies again, boys!" I heard some of our men shout as we marched along the shore; "now for potted missionary, pickled monkey, sangaree, brown girls, red rum, and yellow fever!"

"The mountains all sugar--the rivers all rum."

"Hot marches, mouldy biscuits, yams, and rattlesnakes, plunder and prize-money."

So the thoughtless fellows continued amid reckless laughter (though those islands were literally the grave of Europeans), while they retired to their barracks, in which they were to remain until Sir Charles Grey made his arrangements for beating up the quarters of M. de Rouvigny, the French _chef de bataillon_, who commanded in Martinique.

A rabble of every hue accompanied us to the gates of the their faces exhibiting every variety, from the sable negro of Sierra Leone, to the blanched pallor of the sickly English Creole, whose countenance suggested nothing but miasma, yellow fever, and the grave.