The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. Volume 2

So no more Hope for me from that quarter. The skipper of The Protestant Pledge would have retained me on board for a Carouse; but I had too much care for my Head and my Liver for such pranks, and went back, as dolefully as might be, to keep Maum Buckey's washing-books. I chafed at the thought that I could do no more. I told her the grim news I had heard of her brother-in-law, whereat she wept somewhat; for where Whites were concerned she was not a hard-hearted woman. But she cheered up speedily, saying that Sam had come to as sorry an end, and that she supposed there was but one way with the Handsells, Rum and Riot being generally their Ruin.

As it is one of the failings of youth not to know when it is well off, and to grow A-weary even of continued prosperity, I admit that the life I led palled upon me, and that I longed to change it. But it was not, all things considered, so very unpleasant a one. True, the employment was a sorry one, and utterly beneath the dignity of a Gentleman, such as bearing fardels in the streets or unloading casks and bales at the wharf, for instance. But it is in man's nature never to be satisfied, and when he is well to long to be better, and so, by force of striving, to tumble into a Hole, where indeed he is at the Best, for he is Dead. At this distance of time, though I have many comforts around me, – Worldly Goods, a Reputable name, my Child, and her Husband, – I still look back on my old life in Jamaica, and confess that Providence dealt very mercifully with me in those bygone days. For I had enough to eat and to drink, and a Mistress who, although Passionate and Quarrelsome enough by times, was not unkind. If she would swear, she would also tender gentle Language upon occasion; and if she would throw things, she was not backward in giving one a dollar to heal one's pate. An odd life it was, truly. There was very little of that magnificence about the town of Port Royal in my days which I have heard the Creoles to boast about. It may have been handsome enough in the Spaniard's Reign, or in King Charles the Second's; but I have heard that its most comely parts had been swallowed up by an Earthquake, and, when I remember it, the Main thoroughfare was like nothing half so much as the Fag End of Kent Street in the Borough, where the Broom-men live. As for public scavengers – humane at least – there were none; for that salutary practice of putting rebellious Blacks into chain-gangs, and making them sweep the streets, – which might be well done in London with Pickpockets and the like trash, to their souls' health and the benefit of the Body politic, – did not then obtain. The only way of clearing the offal was by the obscene birds that flew down from the hills; Messieurs the landcrabs, who were assuredly the best scavengers of all, not stirring beyond the Palisadoes. Some things were very cheap, but others inordinately dear. Veal was at a prodigious price; and 'twas a common saying, that you could buy Four children in England cheaper than you could one calf in Jamaica. But for the products and dishes of the colony, which I have elsewhere hinted at, all was as low-priced as it was abundant. What droll names did they give, too, unto their fish and flesh and fowl! How often have you in England heard of Crampos, Bonettas, Ringrays, Albacoras, and Sea-adders, among fish; of Noddies and Boobies and Pitternells and Sheerwaters among birds? And Calialou Soup, and Pepperpot to break your Fast withal in the morning, and make you feel, ere you get accustomed to that Fiery victual, like a Salamander for some hours afterwards!

Now and then also, with some other young white folks with whom I had stricken up acquaintance, – clerks, storekeepers, and the like, – would we seek out the dusky beauties of the town in their own quarters, and shake a leg at their Dignity Routs, Blackamoor Drums, and Pumpkin-Faced Assemblies, or by what other name the poor Black wretches might choose to call their uproarious merrymakings. There, in some shed, all hustled together as a Moorfields Sweetener does luck in a bag, would be a mob of men and women Negroes, all dressed in their bravest finery, although little of it was to be seen either on their Backs or their Feet; the Head being the part of their Bodies which they chiefly delight to ornament. Such ribbons and owches, such gay-coloured rags and blazing tatters, would they assume, and to the Trips and Rounds played to them by some Varlet of a black fiddler, with his hat at a prodigious cock, and mounted on a Tub, like unto the sign of the Indian Bacchus at the Tobacconist's, would they dance and stamp and foot it merrily – with plenty of fruit, salt fish, pork, roasted plantain, and so forth, to regale themselves withal, not forgetting punch and sangaree – quite forgetful, poor mercurial wretches, for the time being of Fetters and the Scourge and the Driver that would hurry them to their dire labour the morrow morn. Surely there never did exist so volatile, light-spirited, feather-brained a race as these same Negro Blacks. They will whistle and crack nuts, ay and dance and sing to the music of the Fiddle or the Banjar an hour after the skin has been half flayed off their backs. They seem to bear no particular Malice to their Tormentors, so long as their weekly rations of plantain, yam, or salt fish, be not denied them, and that they have Osnaburgs enow to make them shirts and petticoats to cover themselves. Give them but these, and their dance at Christmas time, with a kind word thrown to them now and again, just as you would fling a marrow-bone to a dog, and they will get along well enough in slavery, almost grinning at its Horrors and making light of its unutterable Woes. I never saw so droll a people in my life. Nor is it the less astonishing thing about them that, beneath all this seeming lightheartedness and jollity, there often lies smouldering a Fire of the Fiercest passion and blackest revenge. The dark-skinned fellow who may be flapping the flies away from you in the morning, and bearing your kicks and cuffs as though they were so many cates and caresses, may, in the evening, make one in a circle of Heathen monsters joined together to listen to the Devilish Incantations of the Obeah man, – to mingle in ceremonies most hideous and abominable, and of which perhaps that of swearing eternal Hatred to the White Race over a calabash that is made out of the skull of a new-born Babe, and filled with Dirt, Rum, and Blood mixed together, is perchance the least horrid. And yet I don't think the unhappy creatures are by nature either treacherous, malicious, or cruel. 'Tis only when the fit seizes them. Like the Elephants, the idea suddenly comes over them that they are wronged – that 'tis the White Man who has wrought them all these evils, and that they are bound to Trample him to bleeding mud without more ado. But 'tis all done in a capricious cobweb-headed manner; and on the morrow they are as quiet and good-tempered as may be. Then, just as suddenly, will come over them a fit of despondency, or dark, dull, brooding Melancholy. If they are at sea, they will cast themselves into the waves and swim right toward the sharks, whose jaws are yawning to devour them. If they are on dry land, they will, for days together, refuse all food, or worse still, go dirt-eating, stuffing themselves with clay till they have the mal d'estomac, and so die: this mal, of which our English stomach-ache gives no valid translation (which must prove my excuse for placing here a foreign word), being, with the Yaws, their most frequent and fatal complaint. Of a less perplexing nature also are their fits of the Sulks, when, for more than a week at a time, they will remain wholly mute and intractably obstinate, folding their arms or squatting on their hams, and refusing either to move or speak, whatsoever threats may be uttered or enforced against them, and setting no more store by the deep furrowing cuts of the Cowhide whip (that will make marks in a deal board, if well laid on, the which I have often seen) than by the buzzings of a Shambles Fly. They had many ways of treating these fits of the sulks, in my time all of them cruel, and none of them successful. One was, to set the poor wretches in the stocks, or the bilboes, rubbing chillies into the eyes to keep them from going to sleep. Another was a dose of the Fire-cane, as it was called, which was just a long paddle, or slender oar, pierced with holes at the broadest part, with the which the patient being belaboured, a blister on the fish rose to each hole of the Paddle. A curious method, and one much followed; but the Negroes sulked all the more for it. There was a Dutch woman from Surinam, who had brought with her from that plantation of the Hollanders that highly Ingenious Mode of Torment known as the "Spanso Bocko."3 The manner of it was this. You took your Negro and tied him wrists and ankles, so bending him into a neat curve. Then, if his spine did not crack the while, you thrust a stake between his legs, and having thus comfortably Trussed him, pullet fashion, you laid him on the ground one side upwards, and at your leisure scarified him from one cheek to one heel with any instrument of Torture that came handy. Then he (or she, it did not at all matter in the Dutchwoman's esteem), being one gore of welts and gashes, was thought to be Done enough on one side, and consequently required Doing t'other. So one that stood by to help just took hold of the stake and turned the Human Pullet over, and then he was so thoroughly basted as sometimes to be Done a little too much, often dying on the spot from that Rib wasting. Oh, it was rare sport! I wonder whereabouts in the nethermost Hell the cunning Dutchman is now who first devised this torment; also the Dutchwoman who practised it? I can fancy Signor Beelzebub and his Imps taking a keen delight in their application of the Spanso Bocko. The which I never knew it cure a Negro of the sulks. They would force back their tongues into their gullets while the torment was going on, determined not so much as to utter a moan, and, having a peculiar Art that way, brought by them from own country, would often contrive to suffocate themselves and Expire. Their own country! That is what one of the miserable beings said when, being threatened with torment of a peculiar, outrageous nature, he flung himself into a cauldron of boiling sugar, and was scalded to death on the instant. Let me not omit to mention while I am on this chapter of Brutality – wreaked by Christian men upon poor Heathen savages, for many of them were not many weeks from Guinea and Old Calabar, where they had been worshiping Mumbo Jumbo, and making war upon one another in their own Pagan fashion – that I have known Planters even more refined in their cruelty. They would make their slaves drink salt water, and then set them out in the hot sun tied to the outside posts of the Piazza. The end of that was, that they went Raving Mad, gnawing their Tongues and poor blubberous Lips to pieces4 before they died. Another genius, who was a proficient in his Humanities, and quite of a classic frame of mind in his cruelties, bethought himself of a mode of Torture much practised among the Ancient Persians, and so must needs smear the body of an unhappy Negro all over with molasses. Then, binding him fast to a stake in the open, the flies and mosquitoes got at him, – for he was kept there from one morning until the next, – and he presently gave up the Ghost. But nothing that I ever saw or heard of during the time of my living in the Western Indies, could equal the Romantic Torture, not so much invented as imported, by a Gentleman Merchant who had lived among the islands of the Grecian Archipelago, and whose jocose humour it was to imprison his women slaves in loose garments of leather, very tightly secured, however, at the wrists, neck, and ankles. In the same garments, before fastening round the limbs of the victim, one or more Infuriated cats were introduced; the which ferocious animals, playfully disporting themselves in their attempt to find a point of egress, would so up and tear, and mangle, and lacerate, with their Terrible claws, the flesh of the sufferers, that not all the Brine-washing or pepper-pod-rubbing in the world, afterwards humanely resorted to on their release from their leathern sepulchre, would save them from mortification. There was a completeness and gusto about this Performance that always made me think my Gentleman Merchant from the Greek Islands a very Great Mind. The mere vulgar imitations of his Process which, in times more Modern, I have heard of – such as taking an angry cat by the tail and drawing its claws all abroad down the back of a Negro strapped on to a plank, so making a map of all the rivers in Tartarus from his neck to his loins – are, in my holding, beneath contempt. There is positive Genius in that idea of shutting up the cats in a hide-bound prison, and so letting them work their own wills on the inner walls; and I hope my Gentleman Merchant has as warm a niche in Signor Beelzebub's Temple of Fame, as the Great Dutch Philosopher who first dreamt of the Spanso Bocko.

Before I left the island of Jamaica, there befell me an adventure which I may briefly narrate. It being the sickly season and very few ships in port, Maum Buckey's business was somewhat at a stand-still, and with little difficulty I obtained from her a fortnight's holiday. I might have spent it with no small pleasure, and even profit, at one of her up-country plantations, or at the Estate of some other Planter; for I had friends and to spare among the white Overseers and Bookkeepers; and although the Gentry – that is to say, the Enriched Adventurers, who deemed themselves such – were of course too High and Mighty to associate with one of my Mean Station, I was at no loss for companions among those of my own degree. So bent upon a frolic, and being by this time a good Rider and a capital shot, I joined a band of wild young Slips like myself, to go up the country hunting the miserable Negroes that had Marooned, as it was called. These Maroons were runaway slaves who had bid a sudden good-by to bolts and shackles, whips and rods, and shown their Tyrants a clean pair of heels, finding their covert in the dense jungles that covered the mountain slopes, where they lived on the wild animals and birds they could shoot or snare, and sometimes making descents to the nearest plantations, thence to carry off cattle, ponies, or pigs, or whatever else they could lay their felonious hands upon. These were the Blacks again, you will say, with a vengeance, and at many Thousand Miles' distance from Charlwood Chase: but those poor varlets of Deerstealers in England never dreamt of taking Human Life, save when defending their own, in a fair stand-up Fight; whereas the Maroons had no such scruples, and spared neither age, nor sex, nor Degree – that had a white skin – in their bloodthirsty frenzy. The Savage Indians in the American plantations, who will swoop down on some peaceful English settlement, slaying, scalping, and Burning up men, women, and children, – with other Horrors and Outrages not to be described in decent terms, – are just on a par with these black Maroons. Now and again would be found among them some Household Runaways, or Field Hands born into slavery on the Plantations, – and these were most useful in acting as spies or scouts; but as a rule the Head Men and Boldest Villains among the Maroons were Savage Negroes, just fresh from Africa, on whom the bonds of servitude had sate but for a short time, and who in the jungle were as much at Home as though they were in their native wilds again. Of great stature, of prodigious strength, amazing Agility, and astounding natural cunning, these creatures were as ferocious as Wild Baboons that had lived among civilized mankind just long enough to learn the Art of firing off a Gun and wielding a cutlass, instead of brandishing a Tree-branch or heaving a Cocoa-nut. They were without Pity; they were without knowledge that theirs was a cut-throat, nay, a cannibal trade. The white man had made war on them, and torn them from their Homes, where they were happy enough in their Dirt and Grease, their War-paint, and their idolatrous worship of Obeah and Bungey. 'Twas these Men-monsters that we went to hunt. The Planters themselves were somewhat chary of dealing with them; for the cruelty which the Maroons inflicted on those who fell into their power were Awful alone to contemplate, much more so to Endure; but they were glad enough when any gang of young Desperadoes of the meaner white sort – which, speaking not for myself, I am inclined to believe the Meanest and most Despicable of any sort or condition of Humanity – would volunteer to go on a Maroon Hunt. We were to have a Handsome Recompense, whether our enterprise succeeded or failed; but were likewise stimulated to increased exertion by the covenanted promise of so many dollars – I forget how many now – for every head of a Maroon that we brought at our saddlebows to the place of Rendezvous. And so we started one summer morning, some twenty strong, all young, valiant, and not overscrupulous, armed, I need scarcely say, to the teeth, and mounted on the rough but fleet ponies of the country.

A train of Negroes on whom we could Depend – that is, by the strict application of the law of Fear, not Kindness, and who stood in such Terror of us, and of our ever-ready Thongs, Halters, Pistols, and Cutlasses, as scarcely to dare call their souls their own – followed us with Sumpter mules well laden with provisions, kegs of drink, both of water and ardent, and additional ammunition. I was full of glee at the prospects of this Foray, vowed that it was a hundred times pleasanter than making out Maum Buckey's washing-books, and hearing her scold her laundry-wenches; and longed to prove to my companions that the Prowess I had shown at twelve – ay, and before that age, when I brained the Grenadier with the Demijohn – had not degenerated now that I was turned sixteen, and far away from my own country. So we rode and rode, who but we, and dined gaily under spreading trees, boasting of the brave deeds we would do when we had tracked the black Marooning vagabonds to their lair. At which those Negro servants upon whom we could depend grinned from ear to ear, and told us in their lingo that they "oped we would soon Dam black negar tief out, and burn his Fader like canebrake." "'Tis strange," I thought, "that these creatures have not more compassion for their fellows whom we are hunting." To be sure, they were mostly of the Household breed, between whom and the fresh-imported Negroes held to field-service there is little sympathy. It escaped me to tell you that we had with us yet more powerful and Trustworthy auxiliaries than either our arms, our Horses, or our servants; being none other than nine couples of ferocious Bloodhounds, of a breed now extinct in Jamaica, and to be found only at this present moment, I believe, in the island of Cuba. These animals, which were of a terrible Ferocity and exquisitely keen scent, were kept specially for the purpose of hunting Maroons, – such are the Engines which Tyrannical Slavery is compelled to have recourse to, – and were purposely deprived of food beyond that necessary for their bare sustenance, that they might more fully relish the Recompense that awaited them when they had hunted down their prey.

Gaily we went on our Road rejoicing, now by mere bridle-paths, and now plunging our hardy little steeds right through the bristling underwood, when there burst upon us one of those terrible Tornadoes, or Tempests of wind and rain, so common in the Western Indies. The water came down in great solid sheets, drenching us to the skin in a moment; the sky was lit up for hundreds of miles round by huge blasts of lurid fire; the wind tore great branches off trees, and hurled them across the bows of our saddles, or battered our faces with their soaked leaves or sharp prickles. The very Dogs were blinded and baffled by this tremendous protest of nature; and in the very midst of the storm there broke from an ambuscade a band of Maroons, three times as strong as our own, who fell upon us like incarnate Demons as they were. Our hounds had found their scent long before, – just after dinner, indeed, – and we had been following it for some two hours; – even now it was Reeking close upon us, but we little deemed how Near. I suppose that those Negro Rascals, whom we had trusted so implicitly, and on whom we thought that we could Depend so thoroughly, had Betrayed us. This was the second time in my short Life that I fallen into an Ambuscade; and Lo! each time the "Blacks" had been mixed up with my misadventure.

These naked Maroons cared nothing about the Storm, whose torrents ran off their well-oiled carcasses like water off a Duck's back. There was a very Devil of a fight. 'Twas every one for himself, and the Tempest for us all. The Runaways were well armed, and besides could use their teeth and nails to better advantage than many a doughty Fighting man can use his weapons, and clawed and tore at us like Wild Beasts. I doubt not we should have got the worst of it, but that we were Mounted, – and a Man on horseback is three times a Footman in a Hand-to-Hand encounter; and again, that our good friends the bloodhounds, that had been scared somewhat at the outset, recovered their self-possession, and proceeded each to pin his Maroon, and to rend him to pieces with great deliberation. In the end, that is to say, after about twenty-seven minutes' sharp tussling, Dogs, Horses, and Men were victorious; and, as we surveyed the scene of our Triumph, the storm had spent its fury. The black clouds cleared away as suddenly as they had darkled upon us; the Golden Sun came out, and the dreadful scene was lit up in Splendour. Above, indeed, it was all Beauty and Peace for Nature cannot be long Angry. The trees all seemed stemmed and sprayed with glistering jewels; the moisture that rose had the tints of an hundred Rainbows; the long grass flashed and waved; the many birds in the boughs began to sing Hymns of Thankfulness and Joy. But below, ah, me! what a Dreadful scene of blood and Carnage, and Demoniac revenge, there was shown! Of our band we had lost three Killed; five more were badly Wounded; and there was not one of us but had some Hurt of greater or lesser seriousness. We had killed a many of the Maroons; and the two or three that had escaped with Life, albeit most grievously gashed, were speedily put out of their misery. Had we been seeking for Runaway house-servants, we might have taken prisoners; but with a wild African Maroon this is not serviceable. The only thing that you can do with him, when you catch him, is to kill him.

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1

Captain Dangerous! Captain Dangerous! – Ed.

2

That which I have made Captain Dangerous relate in fiction will be found narrated, act for act, and nearly word for word, in the very unromantic evidence given before the first parliamentary committee on slavery and the slave-trade moved for by Mr. Clarkson. – Ed.

3

Vide Stedman's Surinam.

4

Dean of Myddelton's Evidence, Clarkson's Committee.