A boat was lowered at once to order various stores requisite for the ship. As it splashed into the water, I envied the middy who was to be the first that trod on terra firma.
"Now, Mr. Stanley," cried Percival the first lieutenant as he shoved off; "look out that your boat's crew don't suck the monkey, or by Heaven, youngster, I'll mast-head you for four-and-twenty hours."
On this day the captain appeared on deck for the first time since his duel. Lord Kildonan hastened to offer the assistance of his arm; which Cranky accepted with a better grace than we could have anticipated, but now their feud was at an end.
Now, my first thought was of home. How I longed to write the story of my long and tedious voyage; to ask forgiveness and a blessing from those I had left behind; but a knowledge of the difficulty which even officers experienced in the transmission of their letters in those days, made me cast aside, in a species of despair, the pen I had assumed, and I sought to forget my bitterness of heart in gazing on the green shore, and anticipating a release from the thraldom of the frigate.
An emotion of repugnance and alarm, thrilled through me, on seeing the number of sharks that played about in Carlisle bay. To me, it seemed as if all the sharks in the ocean were swarming in that small bight of deep blue water. The sailors averred that "they nosed the soldiers aboard," and knew well when a ship was crowded. One fact is certain, that they were wont to follow the slave-ships hither from the Guinea coast; and as deaths were frequent on board of such filthy and crowded craft, a day seldom passed without a body being tossed overboard, and we could see it rent to pieces under our eyes by those voracious monsters of the deep—for many slave-ships had come in under convoy and lay at anchor to leeward of the fleet; to windward, would not be tolerated.
In a very old folio history of Barbadoes, I remember my comrade, Tom Telfer, reading to me once, when sick in my hammock, the following singular episode concerning a shark in Carlisle Bay.
In the reign of Queen Anne, an old brig, of quaint aspect, high-pooped and low-waisted, named the York Merchant, Captain Jack Beams, commander, a letter-of-marque, pierced for ten guns, besides pateraroes (for, in those days, the Indian seas and the Florida Gulf were full of buccaniers) arrived at Barbadoes from England, and landed a cargo in Carlisle Bay. The warmth of the weather, together with the delightful blue of the deep water, tempted one of the seamen to leap overboard and bathe; but he was scarcely three fathoms from the ship, when there was a cry raised on board:—
"Look out—ware shark!" and an enormous blue one was seen, slowly but surely, with the wake of its body shining under the surface, to shoot towards him.
A sailor, who had a great regard for the luckless swimmer, as they were old friends and messmates, sprang into a boat alongside, and pushed off to his assistance; but the shark was quicker than he, and he arrived in time only to see the monster open its dreadful jaws, and cut fairly in two the body of his friend, as he raised himself shrieking from the bloody water. All the man below the waist was swallowed by the shark at a mouthful. The remainder was brought on board, to the horror and dismay of the crew. For more than an hour after this the insatiable shark was seen slowly swimming round the ship (against the sides of which the water rippled in bloody tints), as if waiting for the other half of his victim.
Many a musket-shot was discharged at him, but he escaped them all.