“Hah, I knew it!”—Well then, Ezekiel was very rich; he came down in August last, in the Pickle schooner, and, as bad luck would have it, he fell sick of the fever.—“Isaac,” quoth Ezekiel, “I am wery sheek; I tink I shall tie.” “Hope note, dear proder; you hab no vife, nor shildir; pity you should tie, Ezekiel. Ave you make your vill, Ezekiel?” “Yesh; de vill is make. I leavish every ting to you, Isaac, on von condition, dat you send my pody to be bury in Curacao. I love dat place; twenty years since I lef de Minories, all dat time I cheat dere, and tell lie dere, and lif dere happily. Oh, you most sent my pody for its puryment to Curacao!” “I will do dat, mine proder.” “Den I depart in peace, dear Isaac;” and the Israelite was as good as his word for once. He did die. Isaac, according to his promise, applied to the captains of several schooners; none of them would take the dead body. “What shall I do?” thought Isaac, “de monish mosh not be loss.” So he straightway had Ezekiel (for even a Jew won’t keep long in that climate) cut up and packed with pickle into two barrels, marked, “Prime mess pork, Leicester, M’Call and Co. Cork” He then shipped the same in the Fan Fan, taking bills of lading in accordance with the brand, deliverable to Mordecai Levi of Curacao, to whom he sent the requisite instructions. The vessel sailed. Off St Domingo she carried away a mast, tried to fetch Carthagena under a jury-spar—fell to leeward, and finally brought up at Honduras.
Three months after, Isaac encountered the master of the schooner in the streets of Kingston. “Ah, mine goot captain—how is you you lookish tin ave you been sheek?” “No, Moses I am well enough, thank you—poor a bit, but sound in health, thank God. You have heard of my having carried away the mainmast, and, after kicking about fifteen days on short allowance, having been obliged to bear up for Honduras?” “I know noting of all dat,” said Isaac; “sorry for it, captain—very sad inteed” “Sad—you may say that, Moses. But I am honest although poor, and here is your bill of lading for your two barrels of provisions; Prime mess, it says damned tough, say I—Howsomedever,” pulling out his purse, “the present value on Bogle, Jopp, and Co’s. wharf is L.5, 6s. 8d. the barrel; so there are two doubloons, Moses, and now discharge the account on the back of the bill of lading, will you?” “Vy should I take payment, captain? if de”—(pork stuck in his throat like ‘amen’ in Macbeth,) “if de barrel ish lost, it can’t be help—de act of God, you know.” “I am an honest man, Isaac,” continued the captain, “although a poor one, and I must tell the truth—we carried on with our own as long as it lasted, at length we had to break bulk, and your two barrels being nearest the hatchway, why we ate them first, that’s all. Lord, what has come over you?”—Isaac grew pale as a corpse.—“Oh, mine Got—mine poor proder, dat you ever was live, to tie in Jamaic—Oh tear, oh tear!”
“Did they eat the head and hands and—”
“Hold your tongue, Tom Cringle, don’t interrupt me; you did not eat them; I tell it as it was told to me. So Isaac Grimm,” continued Fyall, “was fairly overcome; the kindly feelings of his nature were at length stirred up, and as he turned away, he wept—blew his nose hard, like a Chaldean trumpet in the new moon—and while the large tears coursed each other down his care-worn cheeks, he exclaimed, wringing the captain’s hand, in a voice tremulous and scarcely audible from extreme emotion,” “Oh, Isaac Grimm, Isaac Grimm—tid not your heart mishgive you, ven you vas commit te great blasphemy of invoish Ezekiel—flesh of your flesh, pone of your pone—as por—de onclean peast, I mean. If you hat put invoish him ash peef, surely te earthly tabernacle of him, as always sheet in de high places in te Sinacogue, would never have been allow to pass troo te powels of te pershicuting Nazareen. Ah, mine goot captain mine very tear friend—vat—vat—vat av you done wid de cask, captain?”
“Oh most lame and impotent conclusion,” sung out the judge, who by this time had become deucedly prosy, and all hands arose, as if by common consent, and agreed that we had got enough.
So off we started in groups.—Fyall, Captain Transom, Whiffle, Aaron Bang, and myself, sallied forth in a bunch, pretty well inclined for a lark, you may guess. There are no lamps in the streets of Kingston, and as all the decent part of the community are in their cavies by half-past nine in the evening, and as it was now “the witching time o’ night,” there was not a soul in the streets that we saw, except a solitary town guard now and then, lurking about some dark corner under the piazzas. These same streets, which were wide and comfortable enough in the daytime, had become unaccountably narrow and intricate since six o’clock in the evening; and, although the object of the party was to convoy Captain Transom and myself to our boat at the Ordnance Wharf, it struck me that we were as frequently on a totally different tack.
“I say, Cringle, my boy,” stuttered out my superior, Lieutenant and Captain being both drowned in and equalized by the claret—“why, Tom, Tom Cringle, you dog—don’t you hear your superior officer speak, sir, eh?”
My superior officer, during this address, was standing with both arms round a pillar of the piazza.
“I am here, sir,” said I.
“Why, I know that; but why don’t you speak when I Hillo where’s Aaron, and Fyall, and the rest, eh?”