The Cruise of the Midge. Michael Scott

and in the prospect of so dreadful a death, I shouted for aid, as loud as my feebleness would let me. Once more suffering seemed to overcome the creature's ferocity, and he stopped and yelled again.

      Although I was still in some degree bewildered, and almost blinded from the blood that continued to flow down my forehead, and the flap of skin that covered my left eye, so as effectually to seal it, acting as a deadlight as it were, still, for dear life, I grasped my cutlass—alas, the blade was broken short off by the hilt! My left hand then mechanically clutched my belt where my pistol hung—"Ah, it is there, any how." I instantly changed the broken blade into my other hand, and with the coolness of despair cocked the pistol in my right, and lay still, awaiting the approach of my fierce antagonist, under the tremendous persuasion that my fate was inevitable if I missed him. As I looked in breathless dread, he suddenly gave a scrambling wallop towards me—"I am done for—God have mercy on me, and receive my soul!" Another scramble. I felt his hissing hot breath; and the foam that he champed from his fangs, as he tossed his head from side to side in a paroxysm of rage and pain, fell like flakes of hot sulphur over my face. "Now is the time!" I thrust the pistol into his mouth, and pulled the trigger. Almighty powers! it flashed in the pan! With my remaining strength I endeavoured to thrust it down his throat, as he coughed up blood and froth into my face; he shook his head, clutched the weapon in his teeth, and then threw it from him, as if in disappointment that it had not been part and portion of his enemy; and again made a snap at my shoulder. I struck at him with my broken cutlass—he seemed not to feel the blow—and throwing myself back as far as I could, I shrieked in my extremity to that God whom I had so often slighted and forgotten, for mercy to my miserable soul. Crack—a bullet whizzed past me. The dog gave a long, loud howl, gradually sinking into a low murmur as his feet slid from under him, and his head lay open-jawed on the mud—a quivering kick of his feet—and he was dead—as I nearly was through fear.

      "Hillo," quoth old Clinker, the master-at-arms, one of those who had come up from the boats, "who is this fighting with beasts at Ephesus, eh?" The moment he recognised me, the poor fellow made his apology, although, Heaven knows, none was required.

      "Beg pardon, sir; I little thought it was you, Mr. Brail, who was so near being worried by that vile beast."

      I breathed again. The bullet that had so nearly proved my quietus at the commencement of the action, had struck me on the right temple, and, glancing, had ran along my whole forehead, ploughing up the skin, until it reached the left eye, where it detached a large flap, that, as already mentioned, hung down by a tag over my larboard daylight; fairly blinding me on that side.

      "Here, Quinton, and Mornington," said Clinker, to two of the people, who followed him, "here, lend a hand to bring Mr. Brail along, will ye?" They raised me on my legs, and gave me a mouthful of grog from a canteen, and we proceeded, following the voices of our shipmates. Comforted by the cordial, I found my strength return in some measure; and when I was once satisfied that no bones were broken, that I was in fact only and simply kilt, my spirits revived, and before we overtook our allies, having bathed my wound with rum, and bound it with my handkerchief, I was able to walk without support, and in a certain degree to take care of myself.

      The path continued for about half a mile farther, and in all that route we no longer heard or saw any indications of our comrades. "Why, there is no use in all this," said old Clinker; "they must have taken another direction, so we had better return, and wait the young flood to enable us to back out of the scrape."

      I considered this the wisest advice that could be given, and right-about-face was the word, when a scapegrace of a marine, who had straggled from the main body, suddenly came running at the top of his speed from the advance, and sung out—"Lord, sir and messmates, come here, come here!"

      "Why, what do you see?" responded Clinker.

      "Why, sir, here is the queerest sight I ever see'd in all my born days."

      "What is it, man? body o' me, what is it?" exclaimed the old quarter-master, as we bowled along, following the Jolly; the fellow gave no answer, but skipped on before us like a dancing-master. Presently we arrived at an open space, situated at the head of the tortuous mangrove-fringed creek that we had landed in. The channel of it was dry, all above the crook, about fifty yards from us, where it bent towards the east, and full of black slimy mud, over-arched entirely by the snake-like roots and branches of the mangroves; whose upper branches, as usual, supported a thick mat of green leaves, while all below was bare naked convolutions of green weather-stained stems and branches. The muddy canal seemed to end at this spot, under the dark shade of the bushes. Imbedded in its obscene channel, and hauled close up to the head of the creek, lay a large Eboe canoe, about fifty feet long; the bottom hollowed out of one single tree, but there was a washstreak of some kind of hardwood plank, so as to raise the gunwale about a foot above the ledge of the original vessel. The two bamboo masts were unshipped, and stowed amidships on the thwarts, and above twenty paddles were ranged uprightly, with the blades resting on the bottom, on each side of the masts.

      There was a heavy log of unhewn wood, about thirty feet long, laid across the head of the creek, where it terminated; on which three grey parrots were clawing up and down, fastened by the legs with pieces of twine.

      Immediately adjoining was an open area of about fifty yards in diameter—the soil appearing to have been mixed with white ashes, and then baked, or rammed down into a hard floor. This open space was closed in by a thick forest of cashaw-trees on the land side, through which several paths opened; while on every other, except at the head of the creek, it was surrounded by mangrove jungle. In the centre stood a native house, a long, low, one-story, mud building, about forty feet in length, by fifteen wide, thatched with the leaves of the dwarf palm. It had one large aperture in the roof amidships, raised a foot or two by piled turf, from which curled up a thick blue smoke; but there was no opening on the side we approached it by, beyond a low door, not above three feet high; indeed, the eaves of the house itself were scarcely four feet from the ground.

      Right in front of us, and precisely opposite the door, ensconced in a curious nondescript chair of wickerwork, sat, very drunk apparently, and more than half asleep, a ponderous middle-aged negro, dressed in a most primitive fashion; his sole article of clothing being a common woollen blanket, with a hole cut in the middle for his head to pass through, while the sides were fastened together with wooden skewers, which effectually confined his arms; so that there he was, all blanket and head, and sound asleep, or pretending to be so, although the sun shone down into the cleared space with a fierceness that would have broiled the brains of any other man, had they been covered by a common skull. We were all speedily congregated round this beauty; there was no one in attendance on him, and we had no means of judging of his quality.

      "I say, my good man," quoth Lieutenant Sprawl, "pray, did you see any white men—Spaniards—pass this way?"

      The sleeper appeared slowly to recover his faculties; he first stared at the interrogator, then at old Dick Lanyard and me, and then at our people. He wished to seem, or really was, overcome with surprise. Presently—the first lieutenant having for a moment left him, to look around and reconnoitre the lay of the land—a little reefer, Joe Peake by name, stole up to him, and whether or no the aforesaid mid had taken a small pull at his canteen, I cannot tell, but he rattled out in the ear of the torpid savage, "I say, my sleeping beauty, if you don't tell us in a twinkling whereabouts these Spanish raggamuffins are stowed away, by Saint Patrick, but I will make free to waken you with the point of this cutlass here, and in a way by no means ceremonious at all, at all;" and suiting the action to the word, he gave the sable Morpheus a very sufficing progue with the point of his weapon, about the region of the midriff, which instantaneously extracted a yell, worthy of any Bengal tiger that I had ever tumbled up to see. Presently the howling subsided into articulate sounds, but not one of the party could make any thing ship-shape out of the barbarous exclamations.

      "Now, my darlin'," continued wee middy, "try toder tack, dear;" and he again excited the savage's corporeals, after a very sharp fashion, with the same instrument, and the howl was louder than before.

      "Now, may the devil fly away with me," quoth the imp, waxing wroth, "but I will blow your brains out, you drunken thief of the world, if you don't give me a legitimate reply—spake,