The Cruise of the Midge. Michael Scott

remarkable craft; it was upwards of sixty feet long, and manned by forty hands—twenty of a side, all plying their great broad-bladed paddles. These men sat close to the gunwale of the vessel on each side, looking forward, and delving up the water with their shovel-shaped paddles, the two rows sufficiently apart to leave room for upwards of fifty naked men and women to be stowed amidships. These last were all bound with withes, or some kind of country rope; and although there were no serious or very evident demonstrations of grief amongst them, yet it at once occurred to me, that they were slaves sent down to our black friend's depot, to await the arrival of the next vessel, or probably they were intended to have completed the polacre's cargo. An old white-headed, yellow-skinned negro, bearing the tatooed marks of a high-caste man of his tribe on his square-featured visage, as if the skin had been peeled off his temples on each side, was seated in the bow. He evidently took us for part of the crew of some slaver lying below. He shouted to us, and pointed to his cargo; but we had other fish to fry, and accordingly never relaxed in our pulling, until at five in the afternoon, we were once more on board of the felucca.

CHAPTER IV.

       Table of Contents

      THE EVENING AFTER THE BRUSH.

      On mustering, we found our loss had been exceedingly severe—no fewer than seven missing, five of whom, I knew, had been killed outright, and fourteen wounded, some of them seriously enough. The first thing we did was to weigh and drop down out of gunshot of the fort, when we again anchored close under the bank on the opposite side of the river. By the time we were all snug it was near six o'clock in the evening; and the wild cries and uproar on the bank had subsided, no sound marking the vicinity of our dangerous neighbours, excepting a startling shout now and then, that gushed from the mangrove jungle; while a thick column of smoke curled up into the calm evening sky from the smoking ruins of the house. Presently, thin grey vapours arose from the surface of the water on each bank, and rolled sluggishly towards us from the right and left, until the two sheets of mist nearly met. Still a clear canal remained in the middle of the noble stream, as if its dark flow had been narrowed to a space that a pistol-shot would have flown across point-blank. For an hour, the fog increased, until it became like wreaths of wool, and then, when at the densest, it rose gradually, until the bushes on each side of the river became dimly visible, as if a gauze screen had been interposed between us and them. It continued gradually to roll back, right and left, landward; until it folded over and overlapped the trees on the banks, creeping along the tops of them, yet leaving the air clear as crystal above its influence, where presently the evening star rose sparkling as brightly as if it had been a frosty sunset. But we were not long to enjoy this pure atmosphere, for right ahead of us a thicker body of vapour than what had come off previously began to roll down the river, floating in the air about ten or twelve feet from the surface of the water, where it hung in a well-defined cloud, without in any way melting into the clear atmosphere overhead. When it reached within a cable's length of us, it became stationary, and owned allegiance to the genius of the sea-breeze, growing thin and smoke-like, and diffusing itself, and poisoning the air all round. It was the most noxious I ever breathed.

      "Palpable marsh miasmata; the yellow fever in visible perfection," quoth Lieutenant Sprawl.

      Through this mist, the glowing sun, now near his setting, suddenly became shorn of his golden hair, and obliged us with a steady view of his red bald globe; while his splendid wake, that half an hour before sparkled on the broad rushing of the mighty stream, converting its whirling eddies into molten gold, was suddenly quenched under the chill pestilential fen-damp; and every thing looked as like the shutting in of a winter's night in Ould Ireland as possible, with a dash of vapour from my own river Lee, which has mud enough to satisfy even a Cork pig, and that is saying a good deal. Had we only had the cold, the similitude would have been perfect.

      The sun set; and all hands, men and officers, carried on in getting themselves put to rights as well as they could, after a day of such excitement and stirring incidents. None of the wounded, I was rejoiced to find, were likely to slip through our fingers; but the fate of the poor fellows who were missing—What was it? Had they been fairly shot down, or sabred on the spot, or immolated afterwards—after the scenes we had witnessed, what might it not have been? The surgeon's mate, who constituted part of our appointment, was a skilful fellow in his way, and I had soon the gratification to see all the men who had been hurt properly cared for. As for my own wound, thanks to the profuse hæmorrhage, the sensation was now more that of a stunning blow than any thing else; and, with the exception of the bandage round my head, I was not a great deal the worse, neither to look at, nor indeed in reality. Old Davie Doublepipe, Dick Lanyard, and myself, had dived into the small cabin; and having taken all the precautions that men could do in our situation, we sat down, along with Pumpbolt the master, the two reefers, who had come in the frigate's boats, and little Binnacle, to our salt junk and grog.

      "A deuced comfortable expedition, Brail, my darling, we have had this same day," quod Dick.

      "Very," responded Benjamin Brail, Esquire. "But, here's to you, my man, Dum vivimus vivamus—so spare me that case bottle of rum."

      However, we were too awkwardly placed to spend much time over our frugal repast, as the poets say; so presently we were all on deck again. How beautiful, and how different the scene. A small cool breath of wind from the land had again rolled away the impure air from the bosom of the noble river, and every thing overhead was once more clear and transparent. The bright new risen moon was far advanced in the second quarter, and cast a long trembling wake of silver light on the water, sparkling like diamonds on the tiny ripples, while the darkened half of the chaste planet herself was as perfectly visible, as if her disk had been half silver and half bronze. Her mild light, however, was not strong enough to quench the host of glorious stars that studded the cloudless firmament. On either hand, the black banks were now clearly defined against the sky; the one shore being lit up by the rising moon, and the other by the last golden tints of the recently set sun.

      The smoke over the site of the conflagration, which had been pale grey during the daylight, became gradually luminous and bright as the night closed in; and every now and then, as if part of the building we had seen on fire had fallen in, a cloud of bright sparks would fly up into the air, spangling the rolling masses of the crimson-tinged wreaths of smoke. At length the light and flame both slowly decreased, until they disappeared altogether; leaving no indication as to their whereabouts.

      "Come," said I, "we may all turn in quietly for the night. The savages ashore there seem at length to be asleep."

      The words were scarcely out of my mouth, when a bright glare, as if a flame from a heap of dry wood chips had suddenly blazed up, once more illuminated the whole sky right over where we had seen the sparks and luminous smoke, while a loud concert of Eboe drums, horns, and wild shouts, arose in the distance.

      "Some vile Fetish rite is about being celebrated," said I.

      The noise and glare continued, and with a sickening feeling, I turned away and looked towards the rising moon. Her rays trembled on the gurgling and circling eddies of the river, making every trunk of a tree, or wreath of foam as it floated down with the current, loom clear and distinct, as they swam in black chains and dark masses past the sparkling line her chaste light illuminated. I had leaned for near a quarter of an hour with folded arms, resting my back against the lowered yard, admiring the serenity of the scene, and contrasting it with the thrilling events of the day, pondering in my own mind what the morrow was to bring forth, when a large branch of a tree, covered with foliage, floated past and attracted my attention—the black leaves twinkling in the night breeze between us and the shining river. Immediately a small canoe, with two dark figures in it, launched out from the darkness; swam down the river into the bright wake of the glorious planet, where the water flowed past in a sheet of molten silver, and floated slowly across it. The next moment it vanished in the darkness. I saw it distinctly—there could be no mistake.

      "I say, friend Sprawl,"—he was standing beside me enjoying the luxury of a cigar—"did you see that?" pointing in the direction where the tiny craft had disappeared.