Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, No. 15, August, 1851

There is this peculiarity in the abuse of an Oriental, that, beyond wishing the object of it a liberal endowment of blisters, boils, and ulcers (no inefficient curses in a hot country), he does not otherwise allude to him personally; but directs the main burden of his wrath against his female relatives – from his grandmother to his grand-daughter – wives, daughters, sisters, aunts, and grand-aunts inclusive. These he imprecates individually and collectively through every clause of a prescribed formulary, which has been handed down by his ancestors, and which, in searchingness of detail, and comprehensiveness of malediction, leaves small scope to additions or improvements.

Leaving me, then, to rot and wither from the face of the earth, and consigning all my female kindred to utter and inevitable death and destruction, he walked off to a neighboring village to give vent to his feelings and compose his ruffled dignity.

It so happened, that a short time after the faquir had gone, I incautiously held my head, while watching the result of some experiments, over a dish of fuming acid, and consequently became so ill as to be obliged to retire to my bedroom and lie down. In about an hour, I called to my bearer to fetch me a glass of water; but, although I heard him and some of the other servants whispering together behind the purda, or door-curtain, no attention was paid to my summons. After repeating the call two or three times with the same result, I got up to see what was the matter. On drawing aside the purda, I beheld the whole establishment seated in full conclave on their haunches round the door. On seeing me, they all got up and took to their heels, like a covey of frightened partridges. The old kidmudgar was too fat to run far; so I seized him just as he was making his exit by a gap in the garden fence. He was, at first, quite incapable of giving any account of himself; so I made him sit a minute among the long grass to recover his wind, when he broke out with, "Oh! re-bab-re-bab!" and began to blubber, as only a fat kidmudgar can, imploring me to send instantly for the faquir, and make him a present; if I did not, I would certainly be a dead man before to-morrow's sun; "For," said he, "a faquir's curse is good as kismut-ke-bat" (a matter of fate). Some of his fellows now seeing that the murder was out, ventured to come back, and joined in requesting me to save my life while there was yet time.

A laugh was the only answer I could make. This somewhat reassured them, but it was easy to see that I was regarded by all as a doomed man. It was to no purpose that I told them I was now quite well, and endeavored to explain the cause of my sickness. They would have it that I was in a dying state, and that my only salvation lay in sending off a messenger with a kid and a bag of rupees to the faquir. The durdzee (tailor), who had just come from the village where the faquir had taken refuge, told me, that as soon as the faquir heard that I was ill, he performed a pas seul of a most impressive character, shouting and threatening to curse every body in the village as he had cursed me and mine. The consequence was that pice, cowries, rice, and ghee were showered upon him with overwhelming liberality.

Without saying a word, I armed myself with a horsewhip, set out for the village, and found the faquir surrounded by a dense crowd of men and women; to whom he was jabbering with tremendous volubility; telling them how he had withered me up root and branch, and expressing a hope that I would serve as a lesson to the other children of Sheitan who ventured to take liberties with a faquir. The crowd hid me from him till I broke in upon his dreams with a slight taste of my whip across his shoulders. His eyes nearly leaped out of their sockets when he turned round and saw me. Another intimation from my thong sent him off with a yell, leaving the rich spoil he had collected from the simple villagers behind. What became of him I can not tell. I heard no more of him.

A few such adventures as these would tend to lessen the gross, and, to them, expensive superstitions under which the natives of India at present labor.

LOVE AND SMUGGLING. – A STORY OF THE ENGLISH COAST

My name is Warneford – at least it is not very unlike that – and I was born at Itchen, a village distant in those days about a mile and a half, by land and ferry, from Southampton. How much nearer the, as I hear and read, rapidly-increasing town has since approached I can not say, as it will be twenty-nine years next July since I finally quitted the neighborhood. The village, at that time, chiefly inhabited by ferry and fishermen, crept in a straggling sort of way up a declivity from the margin of the Itchen river, which there reaches and joins the Southampton estuary, till it arrives at Pear-Tree Green, an eminence commanding one of the finest and most varied land-and-water views the eye of man has, I think, ever rested upon. My father, a retired lieutenant of the royal navy, was not a native of the place, as his name alone would sufficiently indicate to a person acquainted with the then Itchen people – almost every one of whom was either a Dible or a Diaper – but he had been many years settled there, and Pear-Tree church-yard contained the dust of his wife and five children – I and my sister Jane, who was a year older than myself, being all of his numerous family who survived their childhood. We were in fair circumstances, as my father, in addition to his half-pay, possessed an income of something above a hundred pounds a year. Jane and I were carefully, though of course not highly or expensively educated; and as soon as I had attained the warrior-age of fifteen, I was dispatched to sea to fight my country's battles – Sir Joseph Yorke having, at my father's request, kindly obtained a midshipman's warrant for me; and not many weeks after joining the ship to which I was appointed, I found myself, to my great astonishment, doubling the French line at the Nile – an exploit which I have since read of with far more satisfaction than I remember to have experienced during its performance.

Four years passed before I had an opportunity of revisiting home; and it was with a beating as well as joyful heart, and light, elastic step, that I set off to walk the distance from Gosport to Itchen. I need hardly say that I was welcomed by Jane with tears of love and happiness. It was not long, however, before certain circumstances occurred which induced my worthy but peremptory father to cut my leave of absence suddenly and unmercifully short. I have before noticed that the aborigines of my native place were for the most part Dibles or Diapers. Well, it happened that among the former was one Ellen Dible, the daughter of a fisherman somewhat more prosperous than many of his fellows. This young lady was a slim, active, blue-eyed, bright-haired gipsy, about two years younger than myself, but somewhat tall and womanly for her age, of a light, charming figure, and rather genteel manners; which latter quality, by-the-by, must have come by nature, for but little education of any kind had fallen to her share. She was, it may be supposed, the belle of the place, and very numerous were her rustic admirers; but they all vanished in a twinkling, awestruck by my uniform, and especially by the dangling dirk which I occasionally handled in a very alarming manner; and I, sentimental moon-calf that I was, fell, as it is termed, deeply and earnestly in love with the village beauty! It must have been her personal graces alone – her conversation it could not be – which thus entangled me; for she seldom spoke, and then in reply only, and in monosyllables; but she listened divinely, and as we strolled in the evening through the fields and woods between Itchen and Netley Abbey, gazed with such enchanting eloquence in my face, as I poured forth the popular love and nonsense poetry of the time, that it is very possible I might have been sooner or later entrapped into a ruinous marriage – not by her, poor girl! she was, I am sure, as guileless as infancy, but by her parents, who were scheming, artful people – had not my father discovered what was going on, and in his rough way dispelled my silly day-dreams at once and forever.

The church-yard at the summit of Pear-Tree Green, it used to be commonly said, was that in which Gray composed his famous "Elegy," or at all events which partially inspired it. I know not if this be correct; but I remember thinking, as I sat one fine September evening by the side of Ellen Dible upon the flat wooden railing which then inclosed it, that the tradition had great likelihood. The broad and tranquil waters of the Southampton and Itchen rivers – bounded in the far distance by the New Forest, with its wavy masses of varying light and shade, and on the left by the leafy woods, from out of which I often think the gray ruins of the old abbey must in these days look grimly and spectre-like forth upon the teeming, restless life which mocks its hoary solitude – were at the full of a spring tide. It was just, too, the hour of "parting day;" and as the sun-tipped spires of the Southampton churches faded gradually into indistinctness, and the earlier stars looked out, the curfew, mellowed by distance into music, came to us upon the light air which gently stirred fair Ellen's glossy ringlets, as she, with her bonnet in her hand – for our walk had tired her – looked with her dove-innocent, transparent eyes in mine, while I repeated Gray's melodious lines. The Elegy was concluded, and I was rapturizing even more vehemently than was my wont, when, whack! I received a blow on my shoulder, which sent us both off the rail; for Ellen held me by the arm, and it was quite as much as I could do to keep my feet when I reached them. I turned fiercely round, only to encounter the angry and sardonic countenance of my father. "I'll have no more of this nonsense, Bob," he gruffly exclaimed. "Be off home with you, and to-morrow I'll see you safe on board your ship, depend upon it. As for this pretty minx," he continued, addressing Ellen, who so trembled with confusion and dismay that she could scarcely tie her bonnet-strings, "I should think she would be better employed in mending her father's shirts, or darning her brother's stockings, than in gossiping her time away with a brainless young lubber like you." I was, of course, awfully incensed, but present resistance, I knew, was useless; and after contriving to exchange a mute gesture with Ellen of eternal love, constancy, and despair, we took our several ways homeward. Before twelve o'clock the next day I was posting to Gosport, accompanied by my father, but not till after I had obtained, through the agency of my soft-hearted sister, a farewell interview with Ellen, when we of course made fervent vows of mutual fidelity – affirmed and consecrated, at Ellen's suggestion, by the mystical ceremony of breaking a crooked sixpence in halves – a moiety to be worn by each of us about our necks, as an eternal memorial and pendant protest against the flinty hearts of fathers.

This boyish fancy faded but slowly and lingeringly away with the busy and tumultuous years which passed over my head, till the peace of 1815 cast me an almost useless sea-waif upon the land, to take root and vegetate there as I best might upon a lieutenant's half-pay. My father had died about two years before, and the hundred a year he left us was scarcely more than sufficient for the support of my sister, whose chances of an eligible marriage had vanished with her comeliness, which a virulent attack of small-pox had utterly destroyed, though it had in nothing changed the patient sweetness of her disposition, and the gentle loving spirit that shone through all its disfiguring scars and seams. I had never heard directly from Ellen Dible, although, during the first months of separation, I had written to her many times; the reason of which was partially explained by a few lines in one of Jane's letters, announcing Ellen Dible's marriage – it seemed under some kind of moral compulsion – to a person of their own grade, and their removal from Itchen. This happened about six months after my last interview with her. I made no further inquiries, and, Jane thinking the subject might be a painful one, it happened that, by a kind of tacit understanding, it was never afterward alluded to between us.

The utter weariness of an idle shore life soon became insupportable, and I determined to solicit the good offices of Sir Joseph Yorke with the Admiralty. The gallant admiral had now taken up his permanent residence near Hamble, a village on the river of that name, which issues into the Southampton water not very far from opposite Calshot Castle. Sir Joseph was drowned there about eight or nine years after I left the station. A more perfect gentleman, let me pause a moment to say, or a better seaman, than Sir Joseph, never, I believe, existed; and of a handsome, commanding presence too – "half-way up a hatchway" at least, to use his own humorous self-description, his legs scarcely corresponding in vigorous outline to the rest of his person. He received me with his usual frank urbanity, and I left him provided with a letter to the secretary of the admiralty – the ultimate and not long-delayed result of which was my appointment to the command of the Rose revenue-cutter, the duties attached to which consisted in carefully watching, in the interest of His Majesty's customs, the shores of the Southampton river, the Solent sea, the Wight, and other contiguous portions of the seaboard of Hants and Dorset.

The ways of smugglers were of course new to me; but we had several experienced hands on board, and as I zealously applied myself to the study of the art of contraband, I was not long in acquiring a competent knowledge of the traditional contrivances employed to defraud the revenue. Little of interest occurred during the first three or four weeks of my novel command, except that by the sharpened vigilance of our look-out, certain circumstances came to light, strongly indicating that Barnaby Diaper, the owner of a cutter-rigged fishing-vessel of rather large burden, living near Hamble Creek, was extensively engaged in the then profitable practice of running moonshine, demurely and industriously as, when ashore, he appeared to be ever-lastingly mending his nets, or cobbling the bottom of the smack's boat. He was a hale, wiry fellow this Barnaby – Old Barnaby, as he was familiarly called, surnames in those localities being seldom used – with a wooden stolidity of countenance which utterly defied scrutiny, if it did not silence suspicion. His son, who was a partner in the cutter, lived at Weston, a beautifully-situated hamlet between Itchen and Netley. A vigilant watch was consequently kept upon the movements of the Barnabys, father, son, and grandson – this last a smart, precocious youngster, I understood, of about sixteen years of age, by which family trio the suspicious Blue-eyed Maid was, with occasional assistance, manned, sailed, and worked. Very rarely, indeed, was the Blue-eyed Maid observed to be engaged in her ostensible occupation. She would suddenly disappear, and as suddenly return, and always, we soon came to notice, on the nights when the Rose happened to be absent from the Southampton waters.

We had missed her for upward of a week, when information reached us that a large lugger we had chased without success a few nights previously would attempt to run a cargo at a spot not far from Lymington, soon after midnight. I accordingly, as soon as darkness had fallen, ran down, and stood off and on, within signal-distance of the shore-men with whom I had communicated, till dawn, in vain expectation of the promised prize. I strongly suspected that we had been deceived; and on rounding Calshot Castle on our return, I had no doubt of it, for there, sure enough, was the Blue-eyed Maid riding lightly at anchor off Hamble Creek, and from her slight draught of water it was quite evident that her cargo, whatever it might have consisted of, had been landed, or otherwise disposed of. They had been smart with their work, for the summer night and our absence had lasted but a few hours only. I boarded her, and found Old Barnaby, whom I knew by sight, and his two descendants, whom I had not before seen, busily engaged swabbing the cutter's deck, and getting matters generally into order and ship-shape. The son a good deal resembled the old man, except that his features wore a much more intelligent and good-humored expression; and the boy was an active, bold-eyed, curly-headed youngster, whose countenance, but for a provoking sauciness of expression apparently habitual to him, would have been quite handsome. I thought I had seen his face somewhere before, and he, I noticed, suddenly stopped from his work on hearing my name, and looked at me with a smiling but earnest curiosity. The morning's work had, I saw, been thoroughly performed, and as I was in no humor for a profitless game of cross questions and crooked answers, I, after exchanging one or two colloquial courtesies, in which I had by no means the advantage, returned to the Rose more than ever satisfied that the interesting family I had left required and would probably repay the closest watchfulness and care.

On the evening of the same day the Blue-eyed Maid again vanished: a fortnight slipped by, and she had not re-appeared; when the Rose, having slightly grazed her bottom in going over the shifting shingle at the northwest of the Wight, went into Portsmouth harbor to be examined. Some of her copper was found to be stripped off; there were other trifling damages; and two or three days would elapse before she could be got ready for service. This interval I spent with my sister. The evening after I arrived at Itchen, Jane and I visited Southampton, and accompanied an ancient female acquaintance residing in Bugle-street – a dull, grass-grown place in those days, whatever it may be now – to the theatre in, I believe, the same street. The performances were not over till near twelve o'clock, and after escorting the ladies home, I wended my way toward the Sun Inn on the quay, where I was to sleep – my sister remaining for the night with our friend. The weather, which had been dark and squally an hour or two before, was now remarkably fine and calm; and the porter of the inn telling me they should not close the house for some time longer, I strolled toward the Platform Battery, mounted by a single piece of brass ordnance overlooking the river, and pointing menacingly toward the village of Hythe. The tide was at the full, and a faint breeze slightly rippled the magnificent expanse of water which glanced and sparkled in the bright moon and starlight of a cloudless autumn sky. My attention was not long absorbed by the beauty of the scene, peerless as I deemed it; for unless my eyes strangely deceived me, the Blue-eyed Maid had returned, and quietly anchored off Weston. She appeared to have but just brought up; for the mainsail, three new patches in which chiefly enabled me to recognize her, was still flapping in the wind, and it appeared to me – though from the distance, and the shadow of the dark back-ground of woods in which she lay, it was difficult to speak with certainty – that she was deeply laden. There was not a moment to be lost; and fortunately, just in the nick of time, a boat with two watermen approached the platform steps. I tendered them a guinea to put me on board the smack off Weston – an offer which they eagerly accepted; and I was soon speeding over the waters to her. My uniform must have apprised the Barnabys of the nature of the visit about to be paid them; for when we were within about a quarter of a mile of their vessel, two figures, which I easily recognized to be Old Barnaby and his grandson, jumped into a boat that had been loading alongside, and rowed desperately for the shore, but at a point considerably further up the river, toward Itchen. There appeared to be no one left on board the Blue-eyed Maid, and the shore-confederates of the smugglers did not show themselves, conjecturing, doubtless, as I had calculated they would, upon my having plenty of help within signal call. I therefore determined to capture the boat first, and return with her to the cutter. The watermen, excited by the chase, pulled with a will; and in about ten minutes we ran alongside the Barnaby's boat, jumped in, and found her loaded to the gunwale with brandy kegs.

"Fairly caught at last, old fellow!" I exclaimed exultingly, in reply to the maledictions he showered on us. "And now pull the boat's head round, and make for the Blue-eyed Maid, or I'll run you through the body."

"Pull her head round yourself," he sullenly rejoined, as he rose from the thwart and unshipped his oar. "It's bad enough to be robbed of one's hard arnings athout helping the thieves to do it."

His refusal was of no consequence: the watermen's light skiff was made fast astern, and in a few minutes we were pulling steadily toward the still motionless cutter. Old Barnaby was fumbling among the tubs in search, as he growled out, of his pea-jacket; his hopeful grandson was seated at the stern whistling the then popular air of the "Woodpecker" with great energy and perfect coolness; and I was standing with my back toward them in the bow of the boat, when the stroke-oarsman suddenly exclaimed: "What are you at with the boat's painter, you young devil's cub?" The quick mocking laugh of the boy, and the words, "Now, grandfer, now!" replied to him. Old Barnaby sprang into the boat which the lad had brought close up to the stern, pushing her off as he did so with all his strength; and then the boy, holding the painter or boat-rope, which he had detached from the ring it had been fastened to, in his hand, jumped over the side; in another instant he was hauled out of the water by Old Barnaby, and both were seated and pulling lustily, and with exulting shouts, round in the direction of the Blue-eyed Maid, before we had recovered from the surprise which the suddenness and completeness of the trick we had been played excited. We were, however, very speedily in vigorous chase; and as the wind, though favorable, and evidently rising, was still light, we had little doubt of success, especially as some precious minutes must be lost to the smuggler in getting under weigh, neither jib nor foresail being as yet set. The watermen bent fiercely to their oars; and heavily laden as the boat was, we were beginning to slip freely through the water, when an exclamation from one of the men announced another and more perilous trick that the Barnabys had played us. Old Barnaby, in pretending to fumble about for his jacket, had contrived to unship a large plug expressly contrived for the purpose of sinking the boat whenever the exigences of their vocation might render such an operation advisable; and the water was coming in like a sluice. There was no help for it, and the boat's head was immediately turned toward the shore. Another vociferous shout rang in our ears as the full success of their scheme was observed by the Barnabys, replied to of course by the furious but impotent execrations of the watermen. The boat sank rapidly; and we were still about a hundred yards from the shore when we found ourselves splashing about in the water, which fortunately was not more than up to the armpits of the shortest of us, but so full of strong and tangled seaweed, that swimming was out of the question; and we had to wade slowly and painfully through it, a step on a spot of more than usually soft mud plumping us down every now and then over head and ears. After reaching the shore and shaking ourselves, we found leisure to look in the direction of the Blue-eyed Maid, and had the exquisite pleasure of seeing her glide gracefully through the water as she stood down the river, impelled by the fast-freshening breeze, and towing the watermen's boat securely at her stern.

There were no means of pursuit; and after indulging in sundry energetic vocables hardly worth repeating, we retreated in savage discomfiture toward Weston, plentifully sprinkling the grass and gravel as we slowly passed along; knocked up the landlord of a public house, and turning in as soon as possible, happily exchanged our dripping attire for warm blankets and clean sheets, beneath the soothing influence of which I, for one, was soon sound asleep.

Day had hardly dawned when we were all three up, and overhauling the mud and weeds – the tide was quite gone out – for the captured boat and tubs. They had vanished utterly: the fairies about Weston had spirited them away while we slept, leaving no vestige whatever of the spoil to which we had naturally looked as some trifling compensation for the night's mishap, and the loss of the watermen's boat, to say nothing of the sousing we had got. It was a bad business certainly, and my promise to provide my helpmates with another boat, should their own not be recovered, soothed but very slightly their sadly-ruffled tempers. But lamentations were useless, and, after the lugubrious expression of a dismal hope for better luck next time, we separated.