"'And no wonder!' thought I, from a Yankee schoolmaster as I had found my late shipmate was, before he thought of travelling; but the valuable Daniel turning his hand to help out some communication or other, no doubt, with Napoleon Bonaparte in St Helena, took me at first as so queer an affair, that I didn't know whether to laugh at him or admire his Yankee coolness, when he ran such risks. As for the feasibleness of actually getting the prisoner clear out of the island, our cruising on guard was enough to show me it would be little short of a miracle; yet I couldn't help thinking they meant to try it; and in case of a dark night, which the south-easter was very likely to bring, if it shifted or freshened a little, why, I knew you needn't call anything impossible that a cool head and a bold heart had to do with, provided only they could get their plans laid inside and out so as to tally. The more eager I got for next day, when it would be easy enough for any of us to go up inland after Lord Frederick, as far as Hut's Gate at least. Meantime, the first lieutenant and I walked up together to where the little town broke into a sort of suburb of fancy cottages, with verandahs and green venetians in bungalow style, scattered to both sides of the rock amongst little grass-plots and garden patches—every foot of ground made use of. And a perfect gush of flowers and leaves it was, clustering over the tiles of the low roofs, while you saw through a thicket of poplars and plantains right into the back of the gully, with a ridge of black rock closing it fair up, and Side Path, as they call the road to windward, winding overhead along the crag behind the houses, out of sight round a mass of cliffs. Every here and there, a runlet of water came trickling down from above the trees to water their roots; you saw the mice in hundreds scampering in and out of holes in the dry stone, with now and then a big ugly rat that turned round to face you, being no doubt fine game to the St Helena people, ill off as they all seemed for something to do—except the Chinese with their huge hats, hoeing away under almost every tree one saw, and the Yamstock fishermen to be seen bobbing for mullet outside the ships, in a blaze of light sufficient to bake any heads but their own. Every cottage had seven or eight parrots in it, apparently; a cockatoo on a stand by the door, or a monkey up in a box—not to speak of canaries in the window, and white goats feeding about with bells round their necks: so you may suppose what a jabbering, screaming, whistling, and tinkling there was up the whole hollow, added to no end of children and young ladies making the most of the shade as it got near nightfall—and all that were out of doors came flocking down Side Path.
"Both of us having leave ashore that night, for a ball in one of these same little bungalows near the head of the valley, 'twas no use to think of a bed, and as little to expect getting off to the ship, which none could do after gunfire. For that matter, I daresay there might be twenty such parties, full of young reefers and homeward-bound old East Indians, keeping it up as long as might be, because they had nowhere to sleep. The young lady of the house we were in was one of the St Helena beauties, called 'The Rosebud,' from her colour. A lovely creature she was, certainly, as it was plain our Hebe's first lieutenant thought, with several more to boot: every sight of her figure gliding about through the rest, the white muslin floating round her like haze, different as her face was, made one think of the Seringapatam's deck at sea, with the men walking the forecastle in the middle watch, and the poop quiet over the judge's cabins.
"Two or three times I had fancied for a moment that, if one had somewhat stirring to busy himself with, why, he might so far forget what was no doubt likely to interfere pretty much with a profession like my own; and so it might have been, perhaps, had I only seen her ashore; whereas now, whether it was ashore or afloat, by Jove! everything called her somehow to mind. The truth is, I defy you to get rid very easily of the thought about one you've sailed in the same ship with, be it girl or woman: the same bottom betwixt you and the water, the same breeze blowing your pilot-coat in the watch on deck that ripples past her ear below, and the self-same dangers to strive against! At a break in the dance I went out of the dancing-room into the verandah, where the cool of the air among the honeysuckle-flowers and creepers was delightful to feel; though it was quite dark in the valley, and you couldn't make out anything but the solemn black-blue of the sky full of stars above you, between the two cliffs; or right out, where the stretch of sea, widening to the horizon, looked almost white through the mouth of the valley over the house-roofs below; one heard the small surf plashing low and slow into the little bay, with the boats dipping at their moorings, but I never saw sea look so lonely. Then up at the head of the gully one could mark the steep black crag that shut it up, glooming quiet and large against a gleam from one of the clusters of stars; the sight of it was awful, I didn't know well why, unless by comparison with the lively scene inside, not to say with one's own whole life afloat, as well as the wishes one had at heart. 'Twas pretty late, but I heard the music strike up again in the room, and was going back again, when all of a sudden I thought the strangest sound that ever came to one's ears went sweeping round and round far above the island, more like the flutter of a sail miles wide than aught else I can fancy; then a rush of something like those same blasts of wind I was pretty well used to by this time—but wind it was not—growing in half-a-minute to a rumbling clatter, and then to a smothered roar, as if something more than mortal shot from inland down through the valley, and passed out by its mouth into the open sea at once. I scarce felt the ground heave under me, though I thought I saw the black head of the ravine lift against the stars—one terrible plunge of the sea down at the quays and batteries, then everything was still again; but the whole dancing-party came rushing out in confusion at my back, the ladies shrieking, the men looking up into the sky, or at the cliffs on both sides; the British flag, over the fort on Ladder Hill, blowing out steadily to a stiff breeze aloft. It wasn't for some time, in fact, that they picked up courage again to say it had been an earthquake. However, the ball was over, and, as soon as matters could be set to rights, it was nothing but questions whether it had aught to do with him up at Longwood, or hadn't been an attempt to blow up the island—some of the officers being so much taken aback at first, that they fancied the French had come.
"At last, however, we, who had nothing else for it, got stowed away on sofas or otherwise about the dancing-room; for my part, I woke up just early enough to see the high head of the valley coming out as clearly as before against the morning light, and the water glancing blue out miles away beyond the knot of ships in the opening. The news was only that Napoleon was safe, having been in his bed at the time, where he lay thinking one of the frigates had blown up, they said. Not a word of his that got wind but the people in Jamestown made it their day's text—in the want of which they'd even gossip about the coat he wore that morning; till you'd have said the whole nest of them, soldiers and all, lay under his shadow as the town did at the foot of the cliffs, just ready to vanish as soon as he went down. The Longwood doctor had told someone in the Jew Solomon's toy-shop, by the forenoon, that Bonaparte couldn't sleep that night for making some calculations about a great battle he had fought, when he counted three separate shocks of the thing, and noticed it was luckily right up and down, or else Jamestown would have been buried under tons of rock. The doctor had mentioned besides that there was twice an earthquake before in the island, in former times; but it didn't need some of the townspeople's looks to tell you they'd be afraid many a night after, lest the French Emperor should wake up thinking of his battles; while, as for myself, I must say the notion stuck to me some time, along with my own ideas at that exact moment; at any rate, not for worlds would I have lived long ashore in St Helena.
CHAPTER XXII
"Mr Newland (the first lieutenant) and I set out early in the day, accordingly, with a couple of the Hebe's midshipmen, mounted on as many of the little island ponies, to go up inland for a cruise about the hills. You take Side Path along the crags, with a wall betwixt the hard track and the gulf below, till you lose sight of Jamestown like a cluster of children's toy-houses under you, and turn up above a sloping hollow full of green trees and tropical-like flowering shrubs, round a pretty cottage called The Briars—where one begins to have a notion, however, of the bare blocks, the red bluffs, and the sharp peaks standing up higher and higher round the shell of the island. Then you had another rise of it to climb, on which you caught sight of Jamestown and the harbour again, even smaller than before, and saw nothing before your beast's head but a desert of stony ground, running hither and thither into wild staring clefts, grim ravines, and rocks of every size tumbled over each other like figures of ogres and giants in hard fight. After two or three miles of all this, we came in view of Longwood Hill, lying green on a level to north and east, and clipping to windward against the sea beyond; all round it elsewhere was the thick red crust of the island, rising in ragged points and sharp spires—the greenish sugar-loaf of Diana's Peak shooting in the middle over the high ridge that hid the Plantation House side of St Helena to leeward.
"Between the spot where we were and Longwood is a huge fearful-looking black hollow, called the Devil's Punch-bowl, as round and deep as a pitch-pot for caulking all the ships in the world—except on a slope into one corner of it, where you saw a couple of yellow cottages with gardens about them; while every here and there a patch of grass began to appear, a clump of wild weeds and flowers hanging off the fronts of the rocks, or the head of some valley widening away out of sight, with the glimpse of a house amongst trees, where some stream of water came leaping down off the heights and vanished in the boggy piece of green below. From here over the brow of the track it was all like seeing into an immense stone basin half-hewn out, with all the lumps and wrinkles left rising in it and twisting every way about—the black Devil's Punch-bowl for a hole in the middle, where some infernal liquor or other had run through; the soft bottoms of the valleys just bringing the whole of it up distincter to the green over Longwood Hill; while the ragged heights ran round on every side like a rim with notches in it, and Diana's Peak for a sort of a handle that the clouds could take hold of. All this time we had strained ourselves to get as fast up as possible, except once near the Alarm House, where there was a telegraph signal-post, with a little guard-hut for the soldiers; but there each turned round in his saddle, letting out a long breath the next thing to a cry, and heaving-to directly, at sight of the prospect behind. The Atlantic lay wide away round to the horizon from the roads, glittering faint over the ragged edge of the crags we had mounted near at hand; only the high back of the island shut out the other side—save here and there through a deep-notched gully or two—and accordingly you saw the sea blotched out in that quarter to the two sharp bright ends, clasping the dark-coloured lump between them, like a mighty pair of arms lifting it high to carry it off. Soon after, however, the two mids took it into their wise heads the best thing was to go and climb Diana's Peak, where they meant to cut their names at the very top; on which the first lieutenant, who was a careful middle-aged man, thought needful to go with them, lest they got into mischief; for my part, I preferred the chance of coming across the mysterious Yankee and his comrade, as I fancied not unlikely, or, what was less to be looked for, a sight of Bonaparte himself.
"Accordingly, we had parted company, and I was holding single-handed round one side of the Devil's Punch-bowl, when I heard a clatter of horse-hoofs on the road, and saw the Admiral and Lord Frederick riding quickly past on the opposite side, on their way to Longwood—which, curiously enough, was half-covered with mist at the time, driving down from the higher hills, apparently before a regular gale, or rather some kind of a whirlwind. In fact, I learned after, that such was often the case, the climate up there being quite different from below, where they never feel a gale from one year's end to the other. In the next hollow I got into, it was hot and still as it would have been in India, the blackberry trailers and wild aloes growing quite thick, mixed with prickly-pear bushes, willows, gumwood, and an African palm or two; though from the look of the sea, I could notice the southeast trade had freshened below, promising to blow a good deal stronger that night than ordinary, and to shift a little round.
"Suddenly the fog began to clear by degrees from over Longwood, till it was fairly before me, nearer than I thought; and just as I rode up a rising ground, out came the roof of a house on the slope amongst some trees, glittering wet as if the sun laid a finger on it; with a low bluish-coloured stretch of wood farther off, bringing out the white tents of the soldiers' camp pitched about the edge of it. Nearly to windward there was one sail in sight on the horizon, over an opening in the rocks beyond Longwood House, that seemingly let down toward the coast; however, I just glanced back to notice the telegraph on the signal-post at work, signalling to the Podargus in the offing, and next minute Hut's Gate was right ahead of me, not a quarter of a mile off—a long-shaped bungalow of a cottage, inside of a wall with a gate in it, where I knew I needn't try farther, unless I wanted the sentries to take me under arrest. Betwixt me and it, however, in the low ground, was a party of man-o'war's-men under charge of a midshipman, carrying some timber and house-furniture for Longwood, as I remembered, from seeing them come ashore from the Podargus that morning; so I stood over to give my late shipmates a hail. But the moment I got up with them, it struck me not a little, as things stood, to find three of the four blacks we had taken aboard from that said burnt barque of the American mate's trudging patiently enough under the heaviest loads of the gang. Jetty-black, savage-looking fellows they were, as strong as horses, and reminded me more of our wild friends in the Nouries River, than of States niggers; still, what caught my notice most wasn't so much their being there at all, as the want of the fourth one, and where he might be. I don't know yet how this trifling bit of a puzzle got hold on me, but it was the sole thing that kept me from what might have turned a scrape to myself—namely, passing myself in as officer of the party; which was easy enough at the time, and the tars would have entered into the frolic as soon as I started it. On second thoughts, nevertheless, I bade them good-day, steering my animal away round the slant of the ground, to see after a good perch as near as possible; and I daresay I was getting within the bounds before I knew it when another sentry sung out to me off the heights to keep lower down, first bringing his musket to salute for my uniform's sake, then letting it fall level with a ringing slap of his palm, as much as to say it was all the distinction I'd get over plain clothes.