“Then I am doomed,” groaned poor Mr B——. His daughter fainted, the black officer wept, and having laid his senseless mistress on a sofa, he approached and wrung B——‘s hand. “Alas, my dear sir—how my heart bleeds! But cheer up—King Henry is just—all may be right—all may still be right; and so far as my duty to him will allow, you may count on nothing being done here that is not absolutely necessary for holding ourselves blameless with the Government.”
Enough and to spare of this. We slept on shore that night, and a very neat catastrophe was likely to have ensued thereupon. Intending to go on board ship at daybreak, I had got up and dressed myself, and opened the door into the street to let myself out, when I stumbled unwittingly against the black sentry, who must have been half asleep, for he immediately stepped several paces back, and presenting his musket, the clear barrel glancing in the moonlight, snapped it at me. Fortunately it missed fire, which gave me time to explain that it was not M. B——, attempting to escape; but that day week he was marched to the prison of La Force, near Cape Henry, where his partner had been previously lodged; and from that hour to this, neither of them were ever heard of. Next evening I again went ashore, but I was denied admittance to him; and, as my orders were imperative not to interfere in any way, I had to return on board with a heavy heart.
The day following, Captain Transom and myself paid a formal I visit to the black Baron, in order to leave no stone unturned to obtain poor B——‘s release if we could. Mr Bang accompanied us. We found the sable dignitary lounging in a grass hammock, (slung from corner to corner of a very comfortless room, for the floor was tiled, the windows were unglazed, and there was no furniture whatsoever but an old-fashioned mahogany sideboard and three wicker chairs) apparently half-asleep, or ruminating after his breakfast. On our being announced by a half-naked negro servant, who aroused him, he got up and received us very kindly I beg his lordship’s pardon, I should write graciously—and made us take wine and biscuit, and talked and rattled; but I saw he carefully avoided the subject which he evidently knew was the object of our visit. At length, finding it would be impossible for him to parry it much longer single-handed, with tact worthy of a man of fashion, he called out “Marie! Marie!” Our eyes followed his, and we saw a young and very handsome brown lady rise, whom we had perceived seated at her work when we first entered, in a small dark back porch, and advance after curtseying to us seriatim, with great elegance, as the old fat niger introduced her to us as “Madame la Baronne.”
“His wife?” whispered Aaron; “the old rank goat!”
Her brown ladyship did the honours of the wine-ewer with the perfect quietude and ease of a well-bred woman. She was a most lovely clear skinned quadroon girl. She could not have been twenty; tall and beautifully shaped. Her long coal-black tresses were dressed high on her head, which was bound round with the everlasting Madras handkerchief, in which pale blue was the prevailing colour; but it was elegantly adjusted, and did not come down far enough to shade the fine development of her majestic forehead—Pasta’s in Semiramide was not more commanding. Her eyebrows were delicately arched and sharply defined, and her eyes of jet were large and swimming; her nose had not utterly abjured its African origin, neither had her lips, but, notwithstanding, her countenance shone with all the beauty of expression so conspicuous in the Egyptian sphinx Abyssinian, but most sweet—while her teeth were as the finest ivory, and her chin and throat, and bosom, as if her bust had been an antique statue of the rarest workmanship. The only ornaments she wore were two large virgin gold ear-rings, massive yellow hoops without any carving, but so heavy that they seemed to weigh down the small thin transparent ears which they perforated; and a broad black velvet band round her neck, to which was appended a large massive crucifix of the same metal. She also wore two broad bracelets of black velvet clasped with gold. Her beautifully moulded form was scarcely veiled by a cambric chemise, with exceedingly short sleeves, over which she wore a rose-coloured silk petticoat, short enough to display a finely formed foot and ankle, with a well-selected pearl white silk stocking, and a neat low-cut French black kid shoe. As for gown, she had none. She wore a large-sparkling diamond ring on her marriage finger, and we were all bowing before the deity, when our attention was arrested by a cloud of dust at the top of the street, and presently a solitary black dragoon sparked out from it, his accoutrements and headpiece blazing in the sun, then three more abreast, and immediately a troop of five-and-twenty cavaliers, or thereabouts, came thundering down the street. They formed opposite the Baron’s house, and I will say I never saw a better appointed troop of horse anywhere. Presently an aide-de-camp scampered up; and having arrived opposite the door, dismounted, and entering, exclaimed, “Les Comtes de Lemonade et Marmalade.”—“The who?” said Mr Bang; but presently two very handsome young men of colour, in splendid uniforms, rode up, followed by a glittering staff, of at least twenty mounted officers. They alighted, and entering, made their bow to Baron B——. The youngest, the Count Lemonade, spoke very decent English, and what between Mr Bang’s and my bad, and Captain Transom’s very good, French, we all made ourselves agreeable. I may state here, that Lemonade and Marmalade are two districts of the island of St Domingo, which had been pitched on by Christophe to give titles to two of his fire—new nobility. The grandees had come on a survey of the district, and although we did not fail to press the matter of poor B——‘s release, yet they either had no authority to interfere in the matter, or they would not acknowledge that they had, so we reluctantly took leave, and went on shipboard.
“Tom, you villain,” said Mr Bang, as we stepped into the boat, “if my eye had caught yours when these noblemen made their entree, I should have exploded with laughter, and most likely have had my throat cut for my pains. Pray, did his highness of Lemonade carry a punch-ladle in his hand? I am sure I expected he of Marmalade to have carried a jelly can? Oh, Tom, at the moment I heard them announced, my dear old mother flitted before my mind’s eye, with the bright, well-scoured, large brass pans in the background, as she superintended her handmaidens in their annual preservations.”
After the fruitless interview, we weighed, and sailed for Port au Prince, where we arrived the following evening.
I had heard much of the magnificence of the scenery in the Bight of Leogane, but the reality far surpassed what I had pictured to myself. The breeze, towards noon of the following day, had come up in a gentle air from the westward, and we were gliding along before it like a spread eagle, with all our light sails abroad to catch the sweet zephyr, which was not even strong enough to ruffle the silver surface of the landlocked sea, that glowed beneath the blazing midday sun, with a dolphin here and there cleaving the shining surface with an arrowy ripple, and a brown-skinned shark glaring on us, far down in the deep, clear, green profound, like a water fiend, and a slow-sailing pelican overhead, after a long sweep on poised wing, dropping into the sea like lead, and flashing up the water like the bursting of a shell, as we sailed up into a glorious amphitheatre of stupendous mountains, covered with one eternal forest, that rose gradually from the hot sandy plains that skirted the shore; while what had once been smiling fields, and rich sugar plantations, in the long misty level districts at their bases, were now covered with brushwood, fast rising up into one impervious thicket; and as the Island of Conave closed in the view behind us to seaward, the sun sank beyond it, amidst rolling masses of golden and blood-red clouds, giving token of a goodly day to-morrow, and gilding the outline of the rocky islet (as if to a certain depth it had been transparent) with a golden halo, gradually deepening into imperial purple. Beyond the shadow of the tree-covered islet, on the left hand, rose the town of Port-au-Prince, with its long streets rising like terraces on the gently swelling shore, while the mountains behind it, still gold tipped in the declining sunbeams, seemed to impend frowningly over it, and the shipping in the roadstead at anchor off the town were just beginning to fade from our sight in the gradually increasing darkness, and a solitary light began to sparkle in a cabin window and then disappear, and to twinkle for a moment in the piazzas of the houses on shore like a will-of-the-wisp, and the chirping buzz of myriads of insects and reptiles was coming off from the island a-stem of us, borne on the wings of the light wind, which, charged with rich odours from the closing flowers, fanned us “like the sweet south, soft breathing o’er a bed of violets,” when a sudden flash and a jet of white smoke puffed out from the hill-fort above the town, the report thundering amongst the everlasting hills, and gradually rumbling itself away into the distant ravines and valleys, like a lion growling itself to sleep, and the shades of night fell on the dead face of nature like a pall, and all was undistinguishable.—When I had written thus far—it was at Port-au-Prince, at Mr S——‘s—Mr Bang entered—“Ah! Tom—at the log, polishing—using the plane—shaping out something for Ebony let me see.”
Here our friend read the preceding paragraphs. They did not please him.
“Don’t like it, Tom.”