Enraged by this tenacity and temerity, the messmate of the dead man swore that he would have vengeance; and throwing off his clothes, ere he could be prevented, sprang into the water, armed with a long and sharp-pointed dagger, which he had lashed to his right hand by a lanyard. Even before his white body had risen to the surface, the shark was seen by the ship's crew, making slowly towards him, and they clambered into the rigging and ran out upon the studding-sail booms, where they gazed in breathless astonishment on a combat so unusual and terrific.
At the moment when the shark opened his dreadful jaws, the seaman, with a shout of triumph, dived below, and while grasping the monster's upper fin with his left hand, gave him three stabs in the belly with the dagger which armed his right.
Rendered furious on finding himself so skilfully combated in his own element, the shark plunged to the bottom, leaving the water crimsoned with blood and froth.
Once again he rose to the surface, and again the brave English mariner attacked him in the same manner, and repeated his stabs, until so much blood and foam covered the water, that the scared crew of the York Merchant knew not which had the victory—the man or the giant-fish,—until they saw the dead carcass floating, like an inverted canoe, on the surface of the bay, when they hoisted their ensign, fired off their all pateraroes, and hailed the victor with three hearty cheers; thereafter, adds this quaint old book, he "by the help of an ebbing tide, drags the shark on shore, rips up his bowels, and unites and buries the severed carcass of his friend in one hospitable grave, on the shore of Carlisle Bay."
The evening on which we came to anchor there was beautiful; but a succession of such evenings soon ceases to excite comment in the tropics.
The round windsails rigged down every open hatchway, white and swelling, were conveying the cool fresh air into the deepest recesses of the frigate. Her ports triced up, gave, on one side, glimpses of cool and shady lime and orange groves; on the other, the colder blue of the Carribean Sea; yet the carronades, when one touched them, felt hot beneath the hand, for the burning heat of the breathless day that had passed, yet lingered about them. Alongside, the water rippled gently under the bends; and more than every minute, the dark fin of the blue shark—in those seas the most terrible of all its species—rose above the surface of the clear, deep water.
The sweep of Carlisle Bay, so named from the Earl of Carlisle, who obtained from Charles I. a grant of Barbadoes, as "absolute proprietor and lord of the Caribee isles," with the aspect of the capital, occupied me for some time, though the view was, perhaps, more pleasing than striking. It is named Bridgetown, from a bridge that once spanned a river which flowed into the bay, but which was choked or dried up before 1715. The British flag, always a pleasant feature in a foreign land, as it tells so much of home and safety, was flying above the Garrison,—an extensive range of edifices, at the southern horn of the bay; while the northern is occupied by a battery, the guns of which, peered over a ridge of low coral reefs, whereon the sea was breaking in white foam that sparkled in the light of the setting sun. Beyond, lay Fontabelle, of old the seat of the governors, embosomed among tall cocoanut-trees, the tufted heads of which were tossing their branches on the evening wind.
Sugar-mills, with huge revolving fans, and rows of giant cabbage-trees, broke the wavy sky-line; and from a distance, came, at times, the cheerful but guttural chant of the slimy-skinned and woolly-headed negroes, whose sole garments were, usually, a pair of white or yellow cotton breeches. On the wharfs, gangs of them were busy, under the sharp eye and sharper lash of overseers (attired in spotless white, with broad-leaved hats) hoisting or stowing sugars and other goods on board the shipping at the carenage and mole.
Next day most of the troops were disembarked. Some were placed under canvas at a part of the isle which, being mountainous, is named Scotland; a few were billeted, but the Fusileers had the good fortune to be placed in the garrison at Needham's Point, where Fort Charles, so named by exiled Cavaliers in honour of the first monarch of that name, was built in the days of old.
One requires to undergo the tedium of a long voyage to feel the joy of first stepping ashore.