Or this—
'The anchorage was one unbroken mirror, except where its glass-like surface was shivered into sparkling ripples by the gambols of a skipjack, or the flashing stoop of his enemy the pelican; and the reflection of the vessel was so clear and steady, that at the distance of a cable's length you could not distinguish the water-line, nor tell where the substance ended and shadow began, until the casual dashing of a bucket overboard for a few moments broke up the phantom ship; but the wavering fragments soon reunited, and she again floated double, like the swan of the poet. The heat was so intense, that the iron stancheons of the awning could not be grasped with the hand, and where the decks were not screened by it, the pitch boiled out from the seams. The swell rolled in from the offing in long shining undulations, like a sea of quicksilver, whilst every now and then a flying-fish would spark out from the unruffled bosom of the heaving water, and shoot away like a silver arrow, until it dropped with a flash into the sea again. There was not a cloud in the heavens, but a quivering blue haze hung over the land, through which the white sugar-works and overseers' houses on the distant estates appeared to twinkle like objects seen through a thin smoke, whilst each of the tall stems of the cocoa-nut trees on the beach, when looked at steadfastly, seemed to be turning round with a small spiral motion, like so many endless screws. There was a dreamy indistinctness about the outlines of the hills, even in the immediate vicinity, which increased as they receded, until the Blue Mountains in the horizon melted into sky. The crew were listlessly spinning oakum, and mending sails, under the shade of the awning; the only exceptions to the general languor were John Crow, the black, and Jacko the monkey. The former (who was an improvisatore of a rough stamp) sat out on the bowsprit, through choice, beyond the shade of the canvas, without hat or shirt, like a bronze bust, busy with his task, whatever that might be, singing at the top of his pipe, and between whiles confabulating with his hairy ally, as if he had been a messmate. The monkey was hanging by the tail from the dolphin-striker, admiring what John Crow called "his own dam ogly face in the water."
'Tail like yours would be good ting for a sailor, Jacko; it would leave his two hands free aloft—more use, more hornament, too, I'm sure, den de piece of greasy junk dat hangs from de captain's taffril.—Now I shall sing to you, how dat Corromantee rascal, my fader, was sell me on de Gold Coast—
'"Two red nightcap, one long knife,
All him get for Quacko,
For gun next day him sell him wife—
You tink dat good song, Jacko?"
'"Chocko, chocko," chattered the monkey, as if in answer.
'"Ah, you tink so—sensible hominal!—What is dat! shark?—Jacko, come up, sir: don't you see dat big shovel-nosed fis looking at you? Pull your hand out of the water—Garamighty!"
'The negro threw himself on the gammoning of the bowsprit to take hold of the poor ape, who, mistaking his kind intention, and ignorant of his danger, shrunk from him, lost his hold, and fell into the sea. The shark instantly sank to have a run, then dashed at his prey, raising his snout over him, and shooting his head and shoulders three or four feet out of the water, with poor Jacko shrieking in his jaws, whilst his small bones crackled and crunched under the monster's triple row of teeth.'
To this talent for presentation, by a most fortunate coincidence, Scott's experience enabled him to add a command of rich and rare material: his subject-matter was quite worthy of the powers which he brought to bear upon it. Indeed, few literary men have been more favoured by time and place. For, letting alone the fact that the West Indies were in those days virgin soil to the romance-writer, letting alone the glorious opportunities afforded by a familiarity with Nature in the tropics, studied in storm and calm, by land and sea—and especially to a man of Scott's taste for strong effects, one gifted with his eye for atmosphere, whose genius itself has something of tropical grandeur and luxuriance, were these opportunities valuable,—letting alone, also, the rich and varied social order amid which he moved—its quaint and original types of planter and seaman, the picturesqueness of its desperadoes, and the naïveté of its coloured people—Scott's sojourn in the islands was timed at a particularly stirring epoch in their history. Warfare, smuggling and piracy, slavery and the suppression of the slave-trade were being carried on before his eyes; and it is even suggested that such scenes as the boarding of the Wave, the examination of Job Rumble-tithump, and the trial and execution of the pirates, may very probably have had their foundation in things actually witnessed by the writer. Now I suppose that I am not singular, and that like myself many genuine lovers of romance delight to cherish the belief that what they are reading, if not actually true, is at least in some way related to the author's experience. In this respect Scott satisfies us perfectly. And herein lies his immense advantage over other competitors in the same field. For in reading, for instance (admirable as they are), the pirate scenes of the Master of Ballantrae, we cannot but miss this sense,—so that whilst we hear with bated breath of bloody deeds and hairbreadth 'scapes, we are haunted all the while by an uneasy feeling that this is all but a most brilliantly executed fantasia, or variation, upon documents.
Granting, then, that rarely if ever have more brilliant pictures of more interesting incidents been more lavishly set before a reader than in the pages of Tom Cringle's Log, we are impelled to enquire what are the corresponding weaknesses which have debarred the author from taking the highest rank as a writer. The answer is not far to seek; it is a defect of constructive power. If he possessed much genius, Michael Scott had but little art. The effect of his fine pictures is not cumulative; each is alike revealed, as it were, by a powerful flash, and the result is that they obliterate one another. For it is surely needless to point out that every work of high artistic achievement is a whole, and that in that whole, and in relation to that whole, each part has a value greatly exceeding its value when considered separately. But in Scott's stories this is not so. Remove any one incident from one of his stories, and the reader will be the poorer by the loss of an interesting incident, and by no more. And so, with injury only of the same kind, his books might be extended or curtailed, whilst their incidents might be transposed without injury at all. I am aware that to write in this somewhat heavily academic style of a writer than whom no man of equal gifts made ever less pretention, may be to incur the imputation of taking too high a ground, and to draw down criticism upon the critic's head. I can only reply that the extreme excellence, within their own limits, of Scott's literary achievements has provoked me to it, and that had his works shown less surprising merit they should have been treated in a lighter vein.
The same neglect of constructive power which strikes us in the conduct of the tales is apparent in the treatment of the characters. It is the practice of masters of characterisation to make their characters, so to speak, turn round before the reader, so that, ere the end of the book is reached, no aspect of them shall have been left unseen. But with Scott one aspect is exhibited repeatedly, and thus our knowledge is circumscribed. That the characters live we feel assured, but with one or two such exceptions as Aaron and Obed, it is as members of a class that we recognise them, not as individuals, whilst again and again as we read we are compelled to turn back would we distinguish from his fellows any particular one among the quaintly-named officers and seamen.