Tom Cringle's Log

by Michael Scott

Her name, for I love to be particular, was the Dragonfly; she was painted out and in of a bright red, amounting to a flame colour, oars red the men wearing trowsers and shirts of red flannel, and red net nightcaps—which common uniform the captain himself wore. I think I have said before, that he was a very handsome man, but if I have not I say so now, and when he had taken his seat, and the gigs, all fine men, were seated each with his oar held upright upon his knees ready to be dropped into the water at the same instant, the craft and her crew formed to my eye as pretty a plaything for grown children as ever was seen. “Give way, men,” the oars dipped as clean as so many knives, without a sparkle, the gallant fellows stretched out, and away shot the Dragonfly, like an arrow, the green water foaming into white smoke at the bows, and hissing away in her wake.

She disappeared in a twinkling round a reach of the canal where we were anchored, and we, the officers, for we must needs have our boat also, were making ready to be off, to have a shot at some beautiful cranes that, floating on their large pinions, slowly passed us with their long legs stuck straight out astern, and their longer necks gathered into their crops, when we heard a loud shouting in the direction where the Captain’s boat had vanished. Presently the Devil’s Darning Needle, as the Scotch part of the crew loved to call the Dragonfly, stuck her long snout round the headland, and came spinning along with a Spanish canoe manned by four negroes, and steered by an elderly gentleman, a sharp acute-looking little man, in a gingham coat, in her wake, also pulling very fast; however, the Don seemed dead beat, and the captain was in great glee. By this time, both boats were alongside, and the old Spaniard, Don Ricardo Campana, addressed the captain, judging that he was one of the seamen. “Is the Captain on board?” said he in Spanish. The Captain, who understood the language, but did not speak it, answered him in French, which Don Ricardo seemed to speak fluently, “No, sir, the Captain is not on board; but there is Mr Yerk, the first lieutenant, at the gangway.” He had come for the letter-bag he said, and if we had any newspapers, and could spare them, it would be conferring a great favour on him.

He got his letters and newspapers handed down, and very civilly gave the Captain a dollar, who touched his cap, tipped the money to the men, and winking slightly to old Yerk and the rest of us, addressed himself to shove off. The old Don, drawing up his eyebrows a little, (I guess he rather saw who was who, for all his make-believe innocence,) bowed to the officers at the gangway, sat down, and desiring his people to use their broad-bladed, clumsy looking oars, or paddles, began to move awkwardly away. We, that is the gunroom officers, all except the second Lieutenant, who had the watch, and the master, now got into our own gig also, rowed by ourselves, and away we all went in a covey; the purser and doctor, and three of the middies forward, Thomas Cringle, gentleman, pulling the stroke oar, with old Moses Yerk as coxswain; and as the Dragonflies were all red, so we were all seagreen, boat, oars, trowsers, shirts, and nightcaps. We soon distanced the cumbrous looking Don, and the strain was between the Devil’s Darning Needle and our boat the Watersprite, which was making capital play, for although we had not the bottom of the topmen, yet we had more blood, so to speak, and we had already beaten them, in their last gig, all to sticks. But Dragonfly was a new boat, and now in the water for the first time.

We were both of us so intent on our own match, that we lost sight of the Spaniard altogether, and the Captain and the first Lieutenant were bobbing in the stern sheets of their respective gigs like a couple of souple Tams, as intent on the game as if all our lives had depended on it, when in an instant the long black dirty prow of the canoe was thrust in between us, the old Don singing out, “Dexa mi lugar, paysanos, dexa mi lugar, mis hijos.” We kept away right and left, to look at the miracle;—and there lay the canoe, rumbling and splashing, with her crew walloping about, and grinning and yelling like incarnate fiends, and as naked as the day they were born, and the old Don himself so staid and so sedate and drawley as he was a minute before, now all alive, shouting “Tira diablitos, tira!” flourishing a small paddle, with which he steered, about his head like a wheel, and dancing and jumping about in his seat, as if his bottom had been a haggis with quicksilver in it.

“Zounds,” roared the skipper,—“why, topmen—why, gentlemen, give way for the honour of the ship—Gentlemen, stretch out—Men, pull like devils; twenty pounds if you beat him.”

We pulled, and they pulled, and the water roared, and the men strained their muscles and sinews to cracking, and all was splash, splash, and whiz, whiz, and pech, pech, about us, but it would not do the canoe headed us like a shot, and in passing, the cool old Don again subsided into a calm as suddenly as he had been roused from it, and sitting once more, stiff as a poker, turned round and touched his sombrero, “I will tell that you are coming, gentlemen.”

It was now the evening, near nightfall, and we had been so intent on beating our awkward-looking opponent, that we had none of us time to look at the splendid scene that burst upon our view, on rounding a precipitous rock, from the crevices of which some magnificent trees shot up—their gnarled trunks and twisted branches overhanging the canal where we were pulling, and anticipating the fast-falling darkness that was creeping over the fair face of nature; and there we floated, in the deep shadow of the cliff and trees Dragonflies and Water Sprites, motionless and silent, the boats floating so lightly that they scarcely seemed to touch the water, the men resting on their oars, and all of us rapt with the magnificence of the scenery around us, beneath us, and above us.

The left or western bank of the narrow entrance to the harbour, from which we were now debauching, ran out in all its precipitousness and beauty, (with its dark evergreen bushes overshadowing the deep blue waters, and its gigantic trees shooting forth high into the glowing western sky, their topmost branches gold-tipped in the flood of radiance shed by the rapidly sinking sun, while all below where we lay was grey cold shade,) until it joined the northern shore, when it sloped away gradually towards the east; the higher parts of the town sparkled in the evening sun, on this dun ridge, like golden turrets on the back of an elephant, while the houses that were in the shade covered the declivity with their dark masses, until it sank down to the water’s edge. On the right hand the haven opened boldly out into a basin about four miles broad by seven long, in which the placid waters spread out beyond the shadow of the western bank into one vast sheet of molten gold, with the canoe tearing along the shining surface, her side glancing in the sun, and her paddles flashing back his rays, and leaving a long train of living fire sparkling in her wake.

It was now about six o’clock in the evening; the sun had set to us, as we pulled along under the frowning brow of the cliff, where the birds were fast settling on their nightly perches, with small happy twitterings, and the lizards and numberless other chirping things began to send forth their evening hymn to the great Being who made them and us, and a solitary white sailing owl would every now and then flit spectre like from one green tuft, across the bald face of the cliff, to another, and the small divers around us were breaking up the black surface of the waters into little sparkling circles as they fished for their suppers. All was becoming brown and indistinct near us; but the level beams of the setting sun still lingered with a golden radiance upon the lovely city, and the shipping at anchor before it, making their sails, where loosed to dry, glance like leaves of gold, and their spars, and masts, and rigging like wires of gold, and gilding their flags, which were waving majestically and slow from the peaks in the evening breeze; and the Moorish-looking steeples of the churches were yet sparkling in the glorious blaze, which was gradually deepening into gorgeous crimson, while the large pillars of the cathedral, then building on the highest part of the ridge, stood out like brazen monuments, softening even as we looked into a Stonehenge of amethysts. One half of every object, shipping, houses, trees, and hills, was gloriously illuminated; but even as we looked, the lower part of the town gradually sank into darkness, and faded from our sight—the deepening gloom cast by the high bank above us, like the dark shadow of a bad spirit, gradually crept on, and on, and extended farther and farther; the sailing water-fowl in regular lines, no longer made the water flash up like flame; the russet mantle of eve was fast extending over the entire hemisphere; the glancing minarets, and the tallest trees, and the topgallant-yards and masts of the shipping, alone flashed back the dying effulgence of the glorious orb, which every moment grew fainter and fainter, and redder and redder, until it shaded into purple, and the loud deep bell of the convent of La Merced swung over the still waters, announcing the arrival of even-song and the departure of day.

“Had we not better pull back to supper, sir?” quoth Moses Yerk to the captain. We all started, the men dipped their oars, our dreams were dispelled, the charm was broken—“Confound the matter-of-fact blockhead,” or something very like it, grumbled the captain—“but give way, men,” fast followed, and we returned towards the ship. We had not pulled fifty yards, when we heard the distant rattle of the muskets of the sentries at the gangways, as they discharged them at sundown, and were remarking, as we were rowing leisurely along, upon the strange effect produced by the reports, as they were frittered away amongst the overhanging cliffs in chattering reverberations, when the captain suddenly sung out, “Oars!” All hands lay on them. “Look there,” he continued—“There—between the gigs—saw you ever any thing like that, gentlemen?” We all leant over; and although the boats, from the way they had, were skimming along nearer seven than five knots—there lay a large shark; he must have been twelve feet long at the shortest, swimming right in the middle, and equidistant from both, and keeping way with us most accurately.