Part 19

_An African Nancy-Story_.--The headman (i. e. the king) of a large district in Africa, in one of his tours, visited a young nobleman, to whom he lost a considerable sum at play. On his departure he loaded his host with caresses, and insisted on his coming in person to receive payment at court; but his pretended kindness had not deceived the nurse of the young man. She told him, that the headman was certainly incensed against him for having conquered him at play, and meant to do him some injury; that having been so positively ordered to come to court, he could not avoid obeying; but she advised him to take the river-road, where, at a particular hour, he would find the king’s youngest and favourite daughter bathing; and she instructed him how to behave. The youth reached the river, and concealed himself, till he saw the princess enter the stream alone; but when she thought fit to regain the bank, she found herself extremely embarrassed.--‘Ho-day! what is become of my clothes? ho-day! who has stolen my clothes? ho-day! if any one will bring me back my clothes, I promise that no harm shall happen to him this day--O!’--This was the cue for which the youth had been instructed to wait. ‘Here are your clothes, missy!’ said he, stepping from his concealment: ‘a rogue had stolen them, while you were bathing; but I took them from him, and have brought them back.’--‘Well, young man, I will keep my promise to you. You are going to court, I know; and I know also, that the headman will chop off your head, unless at first sight you can tell him which of his three daughters is the youngest. Now I am she; and in order that you may not mistake, I will take care to make a sign; and then do not you fail to pitch upon me.’ The young man assured her, that, having once seen her, he never could possibly mistake her for any other, and then set forwards with a lightened heart. The headman received him very graciously, feasted him with magnificence, and told him that he would present him to his three daughters, only that there was a slight rule respecting them to which he must conform. Whoever could not point out which was the youngest, must immediately lose his head. The young man kissed the ground in obedience, the door opened, and in walked three little black dogs. Now, then, the necessity of the precaution taken by the princess was evident; the youth looked at the dogs earnestly; something induced the headman to turn away his eyes for a moment, and in that moment one of the dogs lifted up its fore paw.

‘This,’ cried the youth--‘this is your youngest daughter;’--and instantly the dogs vanished, and three young women appeared in their stead. The headman was equally surprised and incensed; but concealing his rage, he professed the more pleasure at that discovery; because, in consequence, the law of that country obliged him to give his youngest daughter in marriage to the person who should recognise her; and he charged his future son-in-law to return in a week, when he should receive his bride. But his feigned caresses could no longer deceive the young man: as it was evident that the headman practised Obeah, he did not dare to disobey him; and knew that to escape by flight would be unavailing. It was, therefore, with melancholy forebodings that he set out for court on the appointed day; and (according to the advice of his old nurse) he failed not to take the road which led by the river. The princess came again to bathe; her clothes again vanished; she had again recourse to her ‘Ho-day! what is become of my clothes?’ and on hearing the same promise of protection, the youth again made his appearance. ‘Here are your clothes, missy,’ said he; ‘the wind had blown them away to a great distance; I found them hanging upon the bushes, and have brought them back to you.’ Probably the princess thought it rather singular, that whenever her petticoats were missing, the same person should always happen to be in the way to find them: however, as she was remarkably handsome, she kept her thoughts to herself, swallowed the story like so much butter, and assured him of her protection. ‘My father,’ said she, ‘will again ask you which is the youngest daughter; and as he suspects me of having assisted you before, he threatens to chop off _my_ head instead of yours, should I disobey him a second time. He will, therefore, watch me too closely to allow of my making any sign to you; but still I will contrive something to distinguish me from my sisters; and do you examine us narrowly till you find it.’ As she had foretold, the headman no sooner saw his destined son-in-law enter, than he told him that he should immediately receive his bride; but that if he did not immediately point her out, the laws of the kingdom sentenced him to lose his head. Upon which the door opened, and in walked three large black cats, so exactly similar in every respect, that it was utterly impossible to distinguish one from the other. The youth was at length on the point of giving up the attempt in despair, when it struck him, that each of the cats had a slight thread passed round its neck; and that while the threads of two were scarlet, that of the third was blue. ‘_This_ is your youngest daughter;’ cried he, snatching up the cat with the blue thread. The headman was utterly at a loss to conceive by what means he had made the discovery; but could not deny the fact, for there stood the princesses in their own shape. He therefore affected to be greatly pleased, gave him his bride, and made a great feast, which was followed by a ball; but in the midst of it the princess whispered her lover to follow her silently into the garden. Here she told him, that an old Obeah woman, who had been her father’s nurse, had warned him, that if his youngest daughter should live to see the day after her wedding, he would lose his power and his life together; that she, therefore, was sure of his intending to destroy both herself and her bridegroom that night in their sleep; but that, being aware of all these circumstances, she had watched him so narrowly as to get possession of some of his magical secrets, which might possibly enable her to counteract his cruel designs. She then gathered a rose, picked up a pebble, filled a small phial with water from a rivulet; and thus provided, she and her lover betook themselves to flight upon a couple of the swiftest steeds in her father’s stables. It was midnight before the headman missed them: his rage was excessive; and immediately mounting his great horse, Dandy, he set forwards in pursuit of the lovers. Now Dandy galloped at the rate of ten miles a minute. The princess was soon aware of her pursuer: without loss of time she pulled the rose to pieces, scattered the leaves behind her, and had the satisfaction of seeing them instantly grow up into a wood of briars, so strong and so thickly planted, that Dandy vainly attempted to force his way through them. But, alas! this fence was but of a very perishable nature. In the time that it would have taken to wither its parent rose-leaves, the briars withered away; and Dandy was soon able to trample them down, while he continued his pursuit. Now, then, the pebble was thrown in his passage; it burst into forty pieces, and every piece in a minute became a rock as lofty as the Andes. But the Andes themselves would have offered no insurmountable obstacles to Dandy, who bounded from precipice to precipice; and the lovers and the headman could once more clearly distinguish each other by the first beams of the rising sun. The headman roared, and threatened, and brandished a monstrous sabre; Dandy tore up the ground as he ran, neighed louder than thunder, and gained upon the fugitives every moment. Despair left the princess no choice, and she violently dashed her phial upon the ground. Instantly the water which it contained swelled itself into a tremendous torrent, which carried away every thing before it,--rocks, trees, and houses; and ‘the horse and his rider’ were carried away among the rest.--‘Hic finis Priami fatorum!’ There was an end of the headman and Dandy! The princess then returned to court, where she raised a strong party for herself; seized her two sisters, who were no better than their father, and had assisted him in his witchcraft; and having put them and all their partisans to death by a summary mode of proceeding, she established herself and her husband on the throne as headman and head-woman. It was from this time that _all_ the kings of Africa have been uniformly mild and benevolent sovereigns. Till then they were all tyrants, and tyrants they would all still have continued, if this virtuous princess had not changed the face of things by drowning her father, strangling her two sisters, and chopping off the heads of two or three dozen of her nearest and dearest relations.

It seems to be an indispensable requisite for a Nancy-story, that it should contain a witch, or a duppy, or, in short, some marvellous personage or other. It is a kind of “pièce à machines” But the creole slaves are very fond of another species of tale, which they call “Neger-tricks,” and which bear the same relation to a Nancy-story which a farce does to a tragedy. The following is a specimen:--_A Neger-trick_.--“A man who had two wives divided his provision-grounds into two parts, and proposed that each of the women should cultivate one half. They were ready to do their proper share, but insisted that the husband should at least take his third of the work. However, when they were to set out, the man was taken so ill, that he found it impossible to move; he quite roared with pain, and complained bitterly of a large lump which had formed itself on his cheek during the night. The wives did what they could to relieve him, but in vain they boiled a negro-pot for him, but he was too ill to swallow a morsel: and at length they were obliged to leave him, and go to take care of the provision-grounds. As soon as they were gone, the husband became perfectly well, emptied the contents of the pot with great appetite, and enjoyed himself in ease and indolence till evening, when he saw his wives returning; and immediately he became worse than ever. One of the women was quite shocked to see the size to which the lump had increased during her absence: she begged to examine it; but although she barely touched it with the tip of her finger as gingerly as possible, it was so tender that the fellow screamed with agony. Unluckily, the other woman’s manners were by no means so delicate; and seizing him forcibly by the head to examine it, she undesignedly happened to hit him a great knock on the jaw, and, lo and behold! out flew a large lime, which he had crammed into it. Upon which both his wives fell upon him like two furies; beat him out of the house; and whenever afterwards he begged them to go to the provision-grounds, they told him that he had got no lime in his mouth _then_, and obliged him from that time forwards to do the whole work himself.”

A negro was brought to England; and the first point shown him being the chalky cliffs of Dover, “O ki!” he said; “me know now what makes the buckras all so white!”

MAY 29.

We once more saw the “Lizard,” the first point of England; and, indeed, it was full time that we should. Besides that our provisions were nearly exhausted by the length of the voyage, our crew was in a great measure composed of fellows of the most worthless description; and the captain lately discovered that some of them had contrived to break a secret passage into the hold, where they had broached the rum-casks, and had already passed several nights in drinking, with lighted candles: a single spark would have been sufficient to blow us all up to the moon!

June 1. (Saturday.)

We took our river pilot on board; and on Wednesday, the 5th, we reached Gravesend. I went on shore at nine in the morning; and here I conclude my _Jamaica Journal_.

1817.

November 5. (Wednesday.)

I left London, and embarked for Jamaica on board the same vessel, commanded by the same captain, which conveyed me thither in 1815. We did not reach the Downs till Sunday, the 9th, after experiencing in our passage a severe gale of wind, which broke the bowsprit of a vessel in our sight, but did no mischief to ourselves. On arriving in the Downs, we found all the flags lowered half way down the masts, which is a signal of mourning; and we now learnt, that, in a few hours after giving birth to a still-born son, the Princess Charlotte of Wales had expired at half-past two on Thursday morning.

November 16. (Sunday.)

“Peaceful slumbering on the ocean.” Here we are still in the Downs, and no symptoms of a probable removal. Indeed, when we weighed our anchor at Gravesend, it gave us a broad hint that there was no occasion as yet for giving ourselves the trouble; for, before it could be got on board, the cable was suffered to slip, and down again went the anchor, carrying along with it one of the men who happened to be standing upon it at the moment, and who in consequence went plump to the bottom. Luckily, the fellow could swim; so in a few minutes he was on board again, and no harm done.

November 19.

We resumed our voyage with fine weather, but wind so perverse, that we did not arrive in sight of Portsmouth till the evening of the 21st. A pilot came on board, and conveyed us into Spithead.

November 22.

This morning we quitted Portsmouth, and this evening we returned to it. The Needle rocks were already in sight, when the wind failed completely. There was no getting through the passage, and the dread of a gale would not admit of our remaining in so dangerous a roadstead. So we had nothing for it but to follow Mad Bess’s example, and “return to the place whence we came.” We are now anchored upon the Motherbank, about two miles from Ryde in the Isle of Wight.

November 30. (Sunday.)

Edward, the young man who was so dangerously wounded on our return from my former voyage to Jamaica, is now chief mate of the vessel, and feels no other inconvenience from his accident, except a slight difficulty in raising his left arm above his head.

DECEMBER 1. (Monday.)

Here we are, still riding at anchor, with no better consolation than that of Klopstock’s halfdevil Abadonna; the consciousness that others are deeper damned than ourselves. Another ship belonging to the same proprietor left the West India Docks three weeks before us, and here she is still rocking cheek by jowl alongside of us,

“One writ with us in sour misfortune’s book.”

DECEMBER 3.

A tolerably fair breeze at length enabled us to set sail once more.

DECEMBER 24. (Wednesday.)

I had often heard talk of “a hell upon earth,” and now I have a perfect idea of “a hell upon water.” It must be precisely our vessel during the last three weeks. At twelve at noon upon the 4th, we passed Plymouth, and were actually in sight of the Lizard point, when the wind suddenly became completely foul, and drove us back into the Channel. It continued to strengthen gradually but rapidly; and by the time that night arrived, we had a violent gale, which blew incessantly till the middle of Sunday, the 7th, when we were glad to find ourselves once more in sight of Plymouth, and took advantage of a temporary abatement of the wind to seek refuge in the Sound. Here, however, we soon found that we had but little reason to rejoice at the change of our situation. The Sound was already crowded with vessels of all descriptions; and as we arrived so late, the only mooring still unoccupied, placed us so near the rocks on one side, and another vessel astern, that the captain confessed that he should feel considerable anxiety if the gale should return with its former violence. So, of course, about eleven at night, the gale _did_ return; not, indeed, with its former violence, but with its violence increased tenfold; and once we were in very imminent danger from our ship’s swinging round by a sudden squall, and narrowly escaping coming in contact with the ship astern, which had not, it seems, allowed itself sufficient cable. Luckily, we just missed her; and our cables (for both our anchors were down) being new and good, we rode out the storm without driving, or meeting with any accident whatever. The next day was squally; and in spite of the Breakwater, the rocking of the ship from the violent agitation of the waves by the late stormy weather was almost insupportable. However, on the 9th, the wind took a more favourable turn, though in so slight a degree, that the pilot expressed great doubts whether it would last long to do us any service. But the captain felt his situation in Plymouth Sound so uneasy, that he resolved at least to make the attempt; and so we crept once more into the Channel. In a few hours the breeze strengthened; about midnight we passed the lights upon the Lizard, and the next morning England was at length out of sight. This cessation of ill luck soon proved to be only “_reculer ‘pour mieux sauter_” The gale, it seems, had only stopped to take breath: about four in the afternoon of Wednesday, the wind began to rise again; and from that time till the middle of the 23d it blew a complete storm day and night, with only an occasional intermission of two or three hours at a time. Every one in the ship declared that they had never before experienced so obstinate a persecution of severe weather: every rag of sail was obliged to be taken down; the sea was blown up into mountains, and poured itself over the deck repeatedly. The noise was dreadful; and as it lasted incessantly, to sleep was impossible; and I passed ten nights, one after another, without closing my eyes; so that the pain in the nerves of them at length became almost intolerable, and I began to be seriously afraid of going blind. In truth, the captain could not well have pitched upon a set of passengers worse calculated to undergo the trial of a passage so rough. As for myself, my brain is so weak, that the continuation of any violent noise makes me absolutely light-headed; and a pop-gun going off suddenly is quite sufficient at any time to set every nerve shaking, from the crown of my head to the sole of my foot. Then we had a young lady who was ready to die of seasickness, and an old one who was little better through fright; and I had an Italian servant into the bargain, who was as sick as the young lady, and as frightened as the old one. The poor fellow had never been on board a ship before; and with every crack which the vessel gave, he thought that to be sure, she was splitting right in half. The sailors, too, appeared to be quite knocked up from the unremitting fatigue to which they were subjected by the perseverance of this dreadful weather. Several of them were ill; and one poor fellow actually died, and was committed to the ocean. To make matters still worse, during the first week the wind was as foul as it could blow; and we passed it in running backwards and forwards, without advancing a step towards our object; till at length every drop of my very small stock of patience was exhausted, and I could no longer resist suggesting our returning to port, rather than continue buffeting about in the chops of the Channel, so much to the damage of the ship, and all contained in her. A change of wind, however, gave a complete answer to this proposal. On Thursday it became favourable as to the prosecution of our voyage, but its fury continued unabated till the evening of the 23d. It then gradually died away, and left us becalmed before the island of Madeira; where we are now rolling backwards and forwards, in sight of its capital, Funchal, on the 24th of December, being seven immortal weeks since my departure from Gravesend. The evening sun is now very brilliant, and shines full upon the island, the rocks of which are finely broken; the height of the mountains cause their tops to be lost in the clouds; the sides are covered with plantations of vines and forests of cedars; and the white edifices of Funchal, built upon the very edge of the shore, have a truly picturesque appearance. We are now riding between the island and an isolated group of inaccessible rocks called “the Deserters;” * and the effect of the scene altogether is beautiful in the extreme.

* The Dezertas.

DECEMBER 25. (Christmas-day.)

A light breeze sprang up in the night, and this morning Madeira was no longer visible.

DECEMBER 31. (Wednesday.)

We are now in the latitudes commonly known by the name of “the Horse Latitudes.” During the union of America and Great Britain, great numbers of horses used to be exported from the latter; and the winds in these latitudes are so capricious, squally, and troublesome in every respect,--now a gale, and then a dead calm--now a fair wind, and the next moment a foul one,--that more horses used to die in this portion of the passage than during all the remainder of it. These latitudes from thence obtained their present appellation, and extend from 29° to 25° or 24 1/2°.

1818.--JANUARY 1.

(Thursday.)

On this day, on my former voyage, I landed at Black River. Now we are still at some distance from the line, and are told that we cannot expect to reach Jamaica in less than three weeks, even with favourable breezes; and our breezes at present are _not_ favourable. Nothing but light winds, or else dead calms; two knots an hour, and obliged to be thankful even for that! A-weel! this is weary work!

JANUARY 17. (Saturday.)

On Saturday, the 3d, we managed to crawl over the line, and had no sooner got to the other side of it, than we were completely becalmed; and even when we resumed our progress, it was at such a pace that a careless observer might have been pardoned for mistaking our manner of moving for a downright standing still. Day after day produced nothing better for us than baffling winds, so light that we scarcely made two miles an hour, and so variable that the sails could be scarcely set in one direction before it became necessary to shift them to another; while the monotony of our voyage was only broken by an occasional thunderstorm, the catching a stray dolphin now and then, watching a shoal of flying fish, or guessing at the complexion of the corsairs on board some vessel in the offing: for the Caribbean Sea is now dabbed all over like a painter’s pallette with corsairs of all colours,--black from St. Domingo, brown from Carthagena, white from North America, and pea-green from the Cape de Verd Islands. On the afternoon of the 4th, one of them was at no very great distance from us; she hoisted English colours on seeing ours; but there was little doubt, from her peculiar construction and general appearance, that she was a privateer from Carthagena. She set her head towards us, and seemed to be doing her best to come to a nearer acquaintance; but the same calm which hindered us from bravely running away from her, hindered her also from reaching us, although at nightfall she seemed to have gained upon us. In the night we had a violent thunder-storm, and the next morning she was not to be seen. Still we continued to creep and to crawl, grumbling and growling, till on Sunday, the 11th, the long-looked-for wind came at last. The trade wind began to blow with all its might and main right in the vessel’s poop, and sent us forward at the rate of 200 miles a day. We passed between Deseada and Antigua in the night of the 15th; and, on the 16th, the rising sun showed us the island mountain of Montserrat; the sight of which was scarcely less agreeable to our eyes from its romantic beauty, than welcome from its giving us the assurance that our long-winded voyage is at length drawing towards its termination.

JANUARY 19.