I should tell you that I got a Hurt in my hand from a kind of short Chopper or Tommyhawk that one of the Savages carried. 'Twas fortunately my left hand, and seeming but a mere scratch, I thought little or nothing about it. But at the end of the second day it began to swell and swell to a most alarming size and tumorous discoloration, the inflammation extending right up my arm, even to my shoulder. Then it was agreed on all sides that the blade of the Tommyhawk with which I had been stricken must have been anointed with some subtle and deadly Poison, of the which not only the Maroons but the common Household and Town Negroes have many, preparing them themselves, and obstinately refusing, whether by hope of Reward or fear of punishment, to reveal the secret of their components to the Whites. I had to rest at the nearest Plantation to our battle-field; and the Planter—who had been a captain in the Chevalier de St. George's service (the old one), that had come out here, after the troubles of 1715, a Banished man, but had since been pardoned, and had taken to Planting, and grown Rich—was kind enough to permit me to be taken into his house and laid in one of his own Guest-chambers, where I was not only tended by his own Domestics, but was sometimes favoured with the Attention and sympathy of his angelic Wife, a young woman of most charming countenance and lively manners, most cheerful, pious, and Humane, taking great care of her slaves, physicking them frequently, reading to them little books written by persons of the Nonconforming persuasion,—a kind of doctrine that I never could abide,—and never suffering them to be whipped upon a Sunday. However, I grew worse; whereupon one Mr. Sprague, that set up for surgeon, but was more like a Boatswain turned landsman than that, or than a Horse, came to me, and was for cutting off my arm, to prevent mortification. There were two obstacles in the way of this operation's performance; the first being that Mr. Sprague had no proper instruments by him beyond a fleam and a syringe, with which, and with however good a will, you can scarcely sever a Man's limb from his Body; and the next that Mr. Sprague was not sober. Love for a young widow had driven him to drinking, it was said; but I think that it was more the Love of Liquor to which his bibulous backslidings were owing. 'Twas lucky for me that he had nor saw nor tourniquet with him. It is true that he departed in quest of some Carpenter's Tools, which he declared would do the job quite as well; but, again to my good luck, the carpenter was as Rare a pottlepot as he; and they two took to boiling rum in a calabash and drinking of it, and smoking of Tobacco, and playing at Skimming Dish Hob, Spie the Market, Shove-halfpenny, Brag, Put, and Dilly Dally, and other games that reminded them of the old country, for days and nights together so that the old Negro woman that belonged to the carpenter, seeing them gambling and drinking in the morning just as she had left them drinking and gambling the overnight, stared with amazement like a Mouse in a Throwster's mill. And by the time they had finished their Rouse I was, through Heaven's kindness and the segacity of a Negro nurse named Cubjack, cured. This woman, it is probable knew the secret of the Poison from the bitter effects of which I was suffering. At all events, she took me in hand, and by warm fomentations and bathings, and some outward applications of herbs and anointed bandages, reduced the swelling and restored my hand to its proper Form and Hue. At the end of the week I was quite cured, and able to resume my journey back to Kingston. I did not fail to express my gratitude to the hospitable Planter and his Lady, and I gave the Nurse Cubjack half a dollar and a silver tobacco-stopper that had been presented to me by Maum Buckey.
As a perverse destiny would have it, this Tobacco-stopper, this harmless trinket, was the very means of my losing my situation, and parting in anger from my Pumpkin-faced Patroness. Although I was, even at the present dating, but a raw lad, she took it into her head to be jealous of me, and all about this silver pipe-stopper. She vowed I had given it away to some Quadroon lass up country; she would not hearken to my protests of having bestowed it upon the nurse who had saved my life; and indeed when, at my instance, inquiries were made, Cubjack's replies did not in any way bear out my statement. The unhappy creature, who had probably sold my Tobacco-stopper for a few joes, or been deluded out of it by the Obeah Man, and was afraid of being flogged if discovery were made thereof, positively denied that I had given her anything beyond the half-dollar. You see that these Negroes have no more idea of the pernicious quality of the Sin of Lying, than has a white European shopkeeper deluding a Lady into buying of a lustring or a paduasoy; and see what similar vices there are engendered among savages and Christian folks by opposite causes.
We had a fearful war of words together, Maum Buckey and myself. She was a bitter woman when vexed, and called me "beggar buckra," "poor white trash," "tam lily thief," and the like. Whereat I told her plainly that I had no liking for her lackered countenance, and that she was a mahogany-coloured, slave-driving, old curmudgeon, that in England would be shown about at the fairs for a penny a peep. At the which she screamed with rage, and threw at me a jug of sangaree. Heavy enough it was; but the old lady had not so good an Aim as I had when I brained the Grenadier with the demijohn.
We had little converse after that. There were some wages due, and these she paid me, telling me that I might "go to de Debble," and that if she ever saw me again, she hoped it would be to see me hanged. I could have got Employment, I doubt not, in Jamaica, or in some other of the islands; but I was for the time sick of the Western Indies, and was resolved, come what might, to tempt my fortune in Europe. A desire to return to England first came over me; nor am I ashamed to confess that, mingled with my wish to see my own country once more, was a Hope that I might meet the Traitorous Villain Hopwood, and tell him to his teeth what a false Deceiver I took him to be. You see how bold a lad can be when he has turned the corner of sixteen; but it was always so with John Dangerous.
Some difficulty, nay, considerable obstacles, I encountered in obtaining a ship to carry me to Europe. The vindictive yellow woman, with whom (through no fault of my own, I declare) I was in disfavour, did so pursue me with her Animosity as to prejudice one Sea Captain after another against me; and it was long ere any would consent to treat with me, even as a Passenger. To those of my own nation did she in particular speak against me with such virulence, that in sheer despite I abandoned for the time my intention of going to England, and determined upon making for some other part of Europe, where I might push my fortune. And there being in port early in the winter a Holland ship, named the Gebrüder, which was bound for Ostend, I struck a bargain with the skipper of her, a decent man, whose name was Van Ganderdrom, and prepared to leave the colony in which I had passed over four years of my Eventful Life. Some friends who took an interest in me,—the "bright English lad," as they called me,—and who thought I had been treated by Maum Buckey with some unnecessary degree of Harshness, made up a purse of money for me, by which I was enabled to pay my Passage Money in advance, and lay in a stock of Provisions for the voyage; for, save in the way of Schnapps, Cheeses, and Herrings, the Holland ships were at that time but indifferently well Found. When every thing was paid, I found that I had indeed but a very small Surplus remaining; but there was no other way, and I bade adieu to the island of Jamaica, as I thought, for ever.
CHAPTER THE THIRD.
OF WHAT BEFEL ME IN THE LOW COUNTRIES.
I landed, after a long and tedious voyage, at the town of Ostend, it being the Spring time of the year 1729, with Youth, Health, a strong Frame, and a comely Countenance (as they told me), indeed, but with just two Guineas in my pouch for all my Fortune. Many a Lord Mayor of London has begun the World, 'tis said, with a yet more slender Provision (I wonder what Harpy Hopwood had to begin with?) and Eighteenpence would seem to be the average of Capital Stock for an Adventurer that is to heap up Riches. Still I seemed to have made my Start in Life's Voyage a great many times, and to have been very near ending with it more than once—witness the Aylesbury Assizes. Thus I felt rather Despondency than Hope at being come almost to manhood, and but to a beggarly Estate of Two-and-forty shillings. "But," said I, "courage, Jack Dangerous; thou hast strong legs and a valorous Stomach; at least thou needst not starve (bar cutpurses) for two-and-forty days; thou hast a knowledge of the French tongue," (which I picked up from a Huguenot emigrant from Languedoc, who was a Barber at Kingston, and taught me for well-nigh nothing), "and art cunning of Fence. Be the world thine Oyster, as the Playactor has it, and e'en open it with a Spadapoint." In this not unwholesome frame of mind I came out of the ship Gebrüder, and set foot on the Port with something like a Defiance of Fortune's scurvy tricks fermenting within me.