Then, as he for the first time noticed our uniforms, he muttered:
“Why, dash my old frizzly wig if they ain’t navy gents!” adding in a much more respectful tone of voice: “Beg pardon, gentlemen, I’m sure, for my familiarity. Didn’t notice at first what you was. Come forward into the range of the light and bring yourselves to an anchor. I’m afraid you’ll find these but poor quarters, gentlemen, after what you’ve been used to aboard a man-o’-war. And you’ll find us a noisy lot too; but the fact is we’re just trying to make the best of things here, trying to be as happy as we can under the circumstances, as you may say. Here, you unmannerly lubbers,” he continued, addressing a group who were sprawling at full length on a rough wooden bench, “rouse out of that and make room for your betters.”
The men scrambled to their feet and made way for us good-naturedly enough; and we seated ourselves on the vacated bench, feeling—at least I may answer for myself—forlorn enough in the great dingy, dirty, comfortless hole into which we had been so unceremoniously thrust. Our new friend seated himself alongside Mr Southcott, and, first informing that gentleman that the company in which we found ourselves were the crews of sundry British merchantmen which had been captured by the Spaniards, and that he was the ex-chief mate of a tidy little Liverpool barque called the Sparkling Foam, proceeded to inquire into the circumstances which had led to our captivity. The account of the mutiny was received by the party, most of whom had gathered round to listen to it, with expressions of the most profound abhorrence and indignation, which were only cut short by the appearance of a sergeant and a file of soldiers bearing the evening’s rations, which were served out raw, to be immediately afterwards handed over to a black cook who answered to the name of “Snowball,” and who had good-naturedly constituted himself the cook of the party. The rations, which included a portion for us newcomers, consisted of a small modicum of meat, a few vegetables, a tolerably liberal allowance of coarse black bread, and water ad libitum. The little incident of the serving out of rations having come to an end, and the sergeant having retired with his satellites, our friend of the Sparkling Foam—whose name, it transpired, was Benjamin Rogers—resumed his conversation with us by proceeding to “put us up to a thing or two.”
“I’ve no doubt, gentlemen,” he said, “but what you’ll be asked to give your parole to-morrow, if you haven’t already—you haven’t, eh? well, so much the better; you’ll be asked to-morrow. Now, if you’ll take my advice you won’t give it; if you do, you’ll simply be turned adrift into the town to shift for yourselves and find quarters where you can. If you’ve got money, and plenty of it, you might manage to rub along pretty well for a time; but when your cash is gone where are you? Why, simply nowheres. Now, this is a roughish berth for gentlemen like you, I’ll allow; but within the last few days we’ve been marched out every morning and set to work patching up an old battery away out here close to the beach, and we’ve been kept at it all day, so that we get plenty of fresh air and exercise, and merely have to ride it out here during the night. There’s only some half-a-dozen soldiers sent out to watch us; and it’s my idea that it might be no such very difficult matter to give these chaps the slip some evening, and at nightfall make our way down to the harbour, seize one of the small coasting craft which seem to be always there, and make sail for Jamaica. At least that’s my notion, gentlemen; you are welcome to it for what it’s worth, and can think it over.”
We thanked our new friend for his advice, which we followed so far as to think and talk it over before stowing ourselves away for the night upon the bundle of straw which constituted the sole apology for a bed and covering allowed us by the Spaniards.
Mr Southcott, the master, was indignant beyond measure at the scurvy treatment thus meted out to us as prisoners of war, and talked a great deal about the representations he intended to make to the authorities with regard to it; but in the meantime he decided to give his parole, in the hope of a speedy exchange, and strongly recommended us to do the same. He was possessed of a little money, it seemed, which he had taken the precaution of secreting about his person immediately on the ship making the land, in anticipation of his speedily finding a use for it; and this money he most generously offered to share with us as far as it would go. To this, however, none of us would listen; and as we were wholly without means the only alternative left to us was to refuse our parole, and put up as best we could with such board and lodging as the Spaniards might be disposed to give us, and to bend all our energies to the accomplishment of a speedy escape. As for me, I still held in vivid remembrance the statement which my father had made to me on the eve of my departure for school, and the caution he had given me against expecting any assistance from him after I had once fairly entered upon my career; and I resolved to endure the worst that could possibly befall me rather than act upon a suggestion which the master threw out, to the effect that possibly someone might be found in the town willing to cash (for a heavy premium) a draft of mine upon my father.
Rogers’ expectation that we should be asked for our parole was verified next morning; and Southcott, giving his, bade us a reluctant farewell after a further ineffectual effort to persuade us to reconsider our decision. Finding that we were not to be persuaded he bade us take heart and keep up our spirits, as his very first task should be to make such representations to the authorities as must result in a very speedy and considerable amelioration of our condition. We parted with many expressions of mutual regret; and that was the last any of us ever saw of the poor fellow, nor were our subsequent inquiries as to what had become of him in the slightest degree successful.
As for us who remained, upon our explaining, through the medium of a very inefficient interpreter, that the lack of means to support ourselves precluded the possibility of our giving our parole upon the terms offered us, we were brusquely informed that we must then be content to be classed among the common prisoners, to put up with their accommodation, and to take part in the tasks allotted to them. We were then abruptly dismissed, and, without further ceremony, marched off to the scene of our labours, which we found to be the fort mentioned by Rogers—an antiquated structure in the very last stage of dilapidation, which it was the task of the prisoners to repair.
To be obliged to work was, after all, no very great hardship. We were in the fresh open air all day, which was infinitely better than confinement between four walls, even had those walls inclosed a far greater measure of comfort than was to be found within the confines of our prison-house. The physical exertion kept us in a state of excellent health, and consequently in fairly good spirits; the labour, though of anything but an intellectual character, kept our minds sufficiently employed to prevent our brooding over our ill fortune; we were allowed to take matters pretty easily so long as we did not dawdle too much, and thus entail upon our lounging guard the unwelcome necessity of scrambling to their feet and hunting up our whereabouts; our daily labours brought with them just that amount of fatigue which ensured sound sleep and a happy oblivion of the dirt and manifold discomforts of our night quarters; and finally, there was the prospect that at any moment some lucky chance might favour our escape.
Four days from the date of our incarceration the muster-roll of the prison was increased by the addition of the names of half a dozen Spanish smugglers, who had been captured a few miles up the coast by one of the guarda-costas and brought into La Guayra. They were a rough, reckless-looking set of vagabonds; but their looks were the worst part of them, for they all turned out to be gay, jovial spirits enough, taking their reverse of fortune with the utmost nonchalance, and having a laugh and a jest for everything and everybody, the guards included, with whom they soon became upon the most amicable terms. One of these men, a fellow named Miguel—I never learned his other name—was attached to the gang of labourers to which I belonged; and though I fought rather shy of him for a time his hearty good-nature and accommodating disposition soon overcame my reserve, and I gradually grew to be on the best of terms with him. He could speak a word or two of English, and, seeming to have taken a fancy to me, he would strike up a conversation with me as often as the opportunity offered, much to his own amusement and mine, since we rarely succeeded in comprehending each other. These efforts at conversation, however, inspired me with the idea that this man’s companionship afforded me an opportunity to acquire a knowledge of Spanish, which could not fail to be of service to me; and this idea I at length with some difficulty succeeded in conveying to my smuggler friend. He pantomimically expressed himself as charmed with the suggestion, which he intimated might be improved upon by my undertaking in return to teach him English; and, a satisfactory understanding being arrived at, we commenced our studies forthwith. We were of course utterly destitute of all aid from books, and we were therefore compelled to fall back upon the primitive method of pointing out objects to each other and designating them alternately in English and Spanish, each repeating the word until the other had caught its proper pronunciation. From this we advanced to short simple sentences, the meaning of which we conveyed as well as we could by appropriate gestures; and though we sometimes made the most ridiculous mistakes through misunderstanding the meaning of those gestures, yet on the whole we managed tolerably well. The first steps were the most difficult, but every word mastered cleared the way to the comprehension of two or three others; so that by the time we had been a couple of months at our studies we found ourselves making really satisfactory progress. And when seven months had been thus spent, though neither could speak the language of the other like a native, each could converse in the other’s language with tolerable fluency and make himself perfectly understood. I had, long before this, however, after considerable hesitation and cautious feeling of my ground, broached to Miguel the question of escape, and had been considerably chagrined to learn from him that, unless aided by friends outside the prison, there was hardly the remotest chance of success. The only way in which it could be done was, in his opinion, to obtain shelter and concealment for, say a month, in some family in the immediate neighbourhood; and then, when the scent had grown cold and the zeal of the pursuers had died away, a dark night and some assistance might enable one to get safely off the coast. If he were free now, he was good enough to say, the thing might be managed, for a consideration, without any very great difficulty; but—a shrug of the shoulders and a glance at the prison dress which he was condemned to wear for more than a year longer eloquently enough closed the sentence.