The next day we went to visit a tafia property in the neighbourhood. On our way we passed a dozen miserable-looking blacks, cleaning canes, followed by an ugly Turk of a brown man, almost naked, with the omnipresent glazed cocked-hat, and a drawn cutlass in his hand. He was abusing the poor devils most lustily as we rode along, and stood so pertinaciously in the path, that I could not for the life of me pass without jostling him. “Le vous demands pardon,” said I, with a most abject salaam to my saddle-bow. He knit his brows and shut his teeth hard, as he ground out between the glancing ivory, “Sacre!—voila ces foutres blancs la,”—clutching the hilt of his couteau firmly all the while. I thought he would have struck me. But Mr S——coming up, mollified the savage, and we rode on.
The tafia estate was a sore affair. It had once been a prosperous sugar plantation, as the broken panes and ruined houses, blackened by fire, were melancholy vouchers for; but now the whole cultivation was reduced to about a couple of acres of wiry sugar canes, and the boiling and distilling was carried on in a small unroofed nook of the original works.
Two days after this we returned to Port-au-Prince, and I could not help admiring the justness of Aaron’s former description; for noisome exhalations were rising thick, as the evening sun shone hot and sickly on the long bank of fat black mud that covers the beach beneath the town. We found Captain Transom at Mr S——‘s. I made my report of the state of the merchantmen loading on the south side of the island, and returned to rest, deucedly tired and stiff with my ride. Next morning Bang entered my room.
“Hillo, Tom—the skipper has been shouting for you this half hour—get up, man—get up.”
“My dear sir, I am awfully tired.”
“Oh!” sung Bang—“‘I have a silent sorrow here’ eh?”
It was true enough; no sailor rides seventy miles on end with impunity. That same evening we bid adieu to our excellent host Mr S——, and the rising moon shone on us under weigh for Kingston, where two days after we safely anchored with the homeward bound trade. “The roaring seas Is not a place of ease,” says a Point ditty. No more is the command of a small schooner in the West Indies. We had scarcely anchored, when the boarding officer from the flag-ship brought me a message to repair thither immediately. I did so. As I stepped on deck, the lieutenant was leaning on the drumhead of the capstan, with the signal-book open before him, while the signal-man was telling off the semaphore, which was rattling away at the Admiral’s pen, situated about five miles off.
“Ah! Cringle,” said he, without turning his head, “how are you? glad to see you—wish you joy, my lad. Here, lend me a hand, will you? it concerns you.” I took the book, and as the man reported, I pieced the following comfortable sentence together.
“Desire—Wave—fit—wood—water—instantly—to take convoy to Spanish Main—to-morrow morning—Mr Cringle—remain on board—orders will be sent—evening.”
“Heigh ho, says Rowley,” sang I Thomas, in great wrath and bitterness of spirit. “D——d hard—am I a duck, to live in the water altogether, entirely?”