Oh, wretched man that I am! the conveyance from Cien Fuegos to the Havana is but once a week.
The sails are still flopping against the yard. It is now noon on the 29th of January, and neither captain, mate, crew, nor the one solitary passenger have the least idea when the good brig —— will reach the port of Cien Fuegos; not even whether she will reach it at all. Since that time we have had wind enough in all conscience—lovely breezes as the mate called them. But we have oversailed our mark; and by how much no man on board this vessel can tell. Neither the captain nor the mate were ever in Cien Fuegos before; and I begin to doubt whether they ever will be there. No one knows where we are. An old stove has, it seems, been stowed away right under the compass, giving a false bias to the needle, so that our only guide guides us wrong. There is not a telescope on board. I very much doubt the skipper's power of taking an observation, though he certainly goes through the form of holding a machine like a brazen spider up to his eye about midday. My brandy and cigars are done; and altogether we are none of us jolly.
Flap, flap, flap! roll, roll, roll! The time passes in this way very tediously. And then there has come upon us all a feeling not expressed, though seen in the face of all, of utter want of confidence in our master. There is none of the excitement of danger, for the land is within a mile of us; none of the exhaustion of work, for there is nothing to do. Of pork and biscuits and water there is, I believe, plenty. There is nothing tragic to be made out of it. But comic misery wears one quite as deeply as that of a sterner sort.
It is hardly credible that men should be sent about a job for which they are so little capable, and as to which want of experience must be so expensive! Here we are, beating up the coast of Cuba against the prevailing wind, knowing nothing of the points which should guide us, and looking out for a harbour without a sea-glass to assist our eyes. When we reach port, be it Cien Fuegos or any other, the first thing we must do will be to ask the name of it! It is incredible to myself that I should have found my way into such circumstances.
I have been unable not to recount my present immediate troubles, they press with such weight upon my spirits; but I have yet to commence my journeyings at their beginning. Hitherto I have but told under what circumstances I began the actual work of writing.
On the 17th of November, 1858, I left the port of Southampton in the good ship 'Atrato.' My purposed business, O cherished reader! was not that of writing these pages for thy delectation; but the accomplishment of certain affairs of State, of import grave or trifling as the case may be, with which neither thou nor I shall have further concern in these pages. So much it may be well that I should say, in order that my apparently purposeless wanderings may be understood to have had some method in them.
And in the good ship 'Atrato' I reached that emporium of travellers, St. Thomas, on the 2nd of December. We had awfully bad weather, of course, and the ship did wonders. When men write their travels, the weather has always been bad, and the ship has always done wonders. We thought ourselves very uncomfortable—I, for one, now know better—and abused the company, and the captain, and the purser, and the purveyor, and the stewards every day at breakfast and dinner; not always with the eloquence of the Frenchman and his walnut, but very frequently with quite equal energy. But at the end of our journey we were all smiles, and so was the captain. He was tender to the ladies and cordial to the gentlemen; and we, each in our kind, reciprocated his attention. On the whole, O my readers! if you are going to the West Indies, you may do worse than go in the 'Atrato.' But do not think too much of your withered apples.
I landed at St. Thomas, where we lay for some hours; and as I put my foot on the tropical soil for the first time, a lady handed me a rose, saying, "That's for love, dear." I took it, and said that it should be for love. She was beautifully, nay, elegantly dressed. Her broad-brimmed hat was as graceful as are those of Ryde or Brighton. The well-starched skirts of her muslin dress gave to her upright figure that look of easily compressible bulk, which, let 'Punch' do what it will, has become so sightly to our eyes. Pink gloves were on her hands. "That's for love, dear." Yes, it shall be for love; for thee and thine, if I can find that thou deservest it. What was it to me that she was as black as my boot, or that she had come to look after the ship's washing?
I shall probably have a word or two to say about St. Thomas; but not now. It is a Niggery-Hispano-Dano-Yankee-Doodle place; in which, perhaps, the Yankee-Doodle element, declaring itself in nasal twang and sherry cobblers, seems to be of the strongest flavour; as undoubtedly will be the case in many of these parts as years go on revolving. That nasal twang will sound as the Bocca Romana in coming fashionable western circles; those sherry cobblers will be the Falernian drink of a people masters of half the world. I dined at the hotel, but should have got a better dinner on board the 'Atrato,' in spite of the withered apples.
From St. Thomas we went to Kingston, Jamaica, in the 'Derwent.' We were now separated from the large host of Spaniards who had come with us, going to Peru, the Spanish Main, Mexico, Cuba, or Porto Rico; and, to tell the truth, we were not broken-hearted on the occasion. Spaniards are bad fellow-travellers; the Spaniard, at least, of the Western hemisphere. They seize the meats upon the table somewhat greedily; their ablutions are not plentiful; and their timidity makes them cumbersome. That they are very lions when facing an enemy on terra firma, I do not doubt. History, I believe, tells so much for them. But half a gale of wind lays them prostrate, at all hours except feeding-time.