[1] The negroes have a savage custom of mangling and tearing the dead bodies of their enemies; some even devouring part of them with their teeth, like the Caribbee Indians. [↑]
CHAP. XXI.
Spirited Conduct of the Rangers and Rebels—A Skirmish—Scene of Brotherly Affection—The Troops return to Barbacoeba—Plan of the Field of Action—A Slave killed by the Oroocookoo Snake.
Colonel Fourgeoud, on finding himself thus foiled by a naked negro, was unable any longer to restrain his resentment, and swore aloud he would pursue Bonny to the world’s end. His ammunition and provisions were however expended, and if they had not, it would have been in vain now to think of overtaking the enemy.—To the surprize of most persons, our hero however persevered in this impracticable project, and dispatched Captain Bolts, with one hundred men and thirty rangers, besides a number of slaves, to transport a quantity of shot, and a week’s provisions from Barbacoeba, and at the same time issued orders for the troops to subsist upon half allowance, desiring the men to supply the deficiency by picking rice, peas, and cassava, and prepare them in the best way they could for their subsistence, and this was also my lot, as well as most of the officers; while it was no bad scene to see ten or twenty of us with heavy wooden pestles, like so many apothecaries, beating the rice in a species of mortars, cut all along in the hard trunk of a levelled [[119]]purper-heart-tree by the rebel negroes (being the only contrivance used by them to separate the rice from the husk) this was however for us a most laborious business, the sweat running down our bodies as if we had been bathing, while water was at this time the only beverage in the camp.
Among other vegetables we had the good fortune to find here great quantities of wild purslane, which only differs from the common, by growing nearer the ground, the leaves being less, and more of a blackish green; this vegetable grows wild in the woods of Guiana, and may be either eaten as a sallad, or stewed, without reserve, being not only a cooling and agreeable food, but reckoned an excellent antidote against the scurvy.
Here were also great quantities of gourd or calebasse trees, which are very useful to the natives of the country. This tree grows to the height of a common apple-tree, with large thick pointed leaves: the gourds it produces are of different forms and dimensions, some being oval, some conical, and some round, growing often to the size of ten or twelve inches in diameter; the shell is hard and very smooth, covered over with a shining skin or epidermis, which becomes brown when the gourd is dry and fit for use: the heart or pulp is a pithy substance, which is easily extricated by the help of a crooked knife. The uses are various to which these gourds are applied, they furnish bottles, powder-flasks, cups, basons, and dishes: I seldom travelled without one, which served me [[120]]as a bason, plate, &c. in the forest. The negroes generally adorn them by carving on the outer skin many fantastical figures, and filling up the vacancies with chalk-dust, which sometimes has a very pretty effect.
The rangers having been out to reconnoitre, returned on the afternoon of the 23d, and reported that they had discovered and destroyed another field of rice to the N. E. This pleased Colonel Fourgeoud very well; but when in the dusk of the evening I observed to him, that I saw several armed negroes advancing at a distance, he turned pale, exclaiming, “Nous sommes perdus!” and ordered the whole camp immediately under arms. In a few seconds these negroes were near enough to be discerned, and we now saw that several of them were carried upon poles, in hammocks. Fourgeoud then said, “We still are ruined, though not the enemy: ’tis Captain Bolts, beaten back, with all his party;” and this proved literally to be the fact, when that unfortunate officer (having delivered the wounded to the surgeons) made his report, that having entered the fatal swamp where Captain Meyland had been defeated, he was attacked by the enemy from the opposite shore, who, without hurting a single European, had made a dreadful havock amongst his rangers; that Captain Valentine, a brave young fellow, belonging to that corps, whilst sounding his horn to animate his countrymen, had it shot away, with his pouch also, and was himself most desperately wounded in five different parts of the body. In this situation he was met [[121]]by his brother, named Captain Avantage, who, upon seeing his mortal condition, a scene of such real fraternal affection ensued as is seldom to be observed in a civilized country:—kneeling at his side, and bending over the mangled Valentine, he sucked the blood and gore from his shattered breast and sides; then cherished him with the manly promise to revenge his death upon his foes, and the hopes that when he himself was killed he should meet him again in a better place.
Colonel Fourgeoud now found that the rebels had kept their promise of massacring the rangers; while Captain Bolts reported that some had fired upon his party from the tops of the palm-trees, and then sliding down with surprising agility, disappeared, whilst the rangers were foaming for revenge on their active adversaries, and could hardly be restrained from an immediate pursuit through the verdure.