Tom Cringle's Log

by Michael Scott

For the information of those who have never seen this delicious insect, I take leave to mention here, that, when full grown, it is a large dingy brown-coloured beetle, about two inches long, with six legs, and two f eelers as long as its body. It has a strong anti-hysterical flavour, something between rotten cheese and assafoetida, and seldom stirs aboard when the sun is up, but lies concealed in the most obscure and obscene crevices it can creep into; so that, when it is seen, its wings and body are thickly covered with dust and dirt of various shades, which any culprit who chances to fall asleep with his mouth open, is sure to reap the benefit of, as it has a great propensity to walk into it, partly for the sake of the crumbs adhering to the masticators, and also, apparently, with a scientific desire to inspect, by accurate admeasurement with the aforesaid antennae, the state and condition of the whole potato trap.

At the same time I felt something gnawing the toe of my boot, which I inferred to be a rat—another agreeable customer for which I had a special abhorrence; but, as for beetles of all kinds, from my boyhood up, they had been an abomination unto me, and a cockroach is the most abominable of all beetles; so between the two I was speedily roused from my state of supine, or rather dogged endurance; and, forgetting the geography of my position, I sprung to my feet, whereby I nearly fractured my skull against the low deck above. I first tried the skylight; it was battened down—then the companion hatch; it was locked—but the ladder leading up to it being cooler than the noisome vapour bath I had left, I remained standing in it, trying to catch a mouthful of fresh air through the joints of the door. All this while we had been slipping along shore with the land-wind on our beam, at the rate of five or six knots, but so gently and silently, that I could distinctly hear the roar of the surf, as the long smooth swell broke on the beach, which, from the loudness of the noise, could not be above a mile to windward of us. I perceived at the same time that the schooner, although going free, did not keep away nor take all the advantage of the land-wind to make his easting, before the sea-breeze set down, that he might have done, so that it was evident he did not intend to beat up, so as to fetch the Crooked Island Passage, which would have been his course, had he been bound for the States; but was standing over to the Cuba shore, at that time swarming with pirates.

It was now good daylight, and the terral gradually died away, and left us rolling gunwale under, as we rose and fell on the long seas, with our sails flapping, bulkheads creaking and screaming, and mainboom jig-jigging, as if it would have torn every thing to pieces. I could hear my friend Obed walking the deck, and whistling manfully for the sea-breeze, and exclaiming from time to time in his barbarous lingo, “Souffle, souffle, San Antonio.” But the saint had no bowels, and there we lay roasting until near ten o’clock in the forenoon. During all this period, Obed, who was shortsighted, as I learned afterwards, kept desiring his right arm, Paul Brandywine, to keep a bright look-out for the sea-breeze to windward, or rather to the eastward, for there was no wind—because he knowed it often times tumbling down right sudden and dangerous at this season about the corner of the island hereabouts; and the pride of the morning often brought a shower with it, fit to level a maize plat smooth as his hand.

“No black clouds to windward yet, Paul?”

Paul could see nothing, and the question was repeated three or four times.

“There is a small black cloud about the size of my hand to windward, sir, right in the wake of the sun, just now, but it won’t come to any thing; I sees no signs of any wind.”

“And Elijah said to his servant, Go up now, and look towards the sea, and he went up and looked, and said there is nothing; and he said go again seven times, and it came to pass the seventh time, that he said behold there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man’s hand.”

I knew what this foreboded, which, as I thought, was more than friend Obed did; for he shortened no sail, and kept all his kites abroad, for no use as it struck me, unless he wished to wear them out by flapping against the masts. He was indeed a strange mixture of skill and carelessness; but, when fairly stirred up, one of the most daring and expert and self-possessed seamen I had ever seen, as very soon had an ugly opportunity of ascertaining.

The cloud on the horizon continued to rise rapidly, spreading over the whole eastern sky, and the morning began to lower very ominously; but there was no sudden squall, the first of the breeze coming down as usual in cats’ paws, and freshening gradually; nor did I expect there would be, although I was certain it would soon blow a merry capful of wind, which might take in some of the schooner’s small sails, and pretty considerably bother us, unless we could better our offing speedily, for it blew right on shore, which, by the setting in of the sea-breeze, was now close under our lee.

At length the sniffler reached us, and the sharp little vessel began to speak, as the rushing sound through the water is called; while the wind sang like an Eolian harp through the taut weather-rigging. Presently I heard the word given to take in the two gaff-topsails and flying jib, which was scarcely done, when the moaning sound roughened into a roar, and the little vessel began to yerk at the head seas, as if she would have cut through them, in place of rising to them, and to lie over, as if Davy Jones himself had clapperclawed the mast heads, and was in the act of using them as levers to capsize her, while the sails were tugging at her, as if they would have torn the spars out of her, so that I expected every moment, either that she would turn over, keel up, or that the masts would snap short off by the deck.