“You no wort—you go live in town, an no care about we who make Massa money here; you no see we all tarving here;” and the nice cleanly looking fat matron, who made the remark, laughed loudly.
He entered into the spirit of the affair with great kindliness, and verily, before he got clear, his pockets were as empty as a half-pay lieutenant’s. His fee pennies were flying about in all directions.
After breakfast we went to view the natural bridge, a band of rock that connects two hills together, and beneath which a roaring stream rushes, hid entirely by the bushes and trees that grow on each side of the ravine. We descended by a circuitous footpath into the river course, and walked under the natural arch, and certainly never was any thing finer; a regular Der Freyschutz dell. The arch overhead was nearly fifty feet high, and the echo was superb, as we found, when the sweet voices of the ladies, blending in softest harmony—(lord, how fine you become, Tom!)—in one of Moore’s melodies, were reflected back on us at the close with the most thrilling distinctness; while a stone, pitched against any of the ivy-like creepers, with which the face of the rock was covered, was sure to dislodge a whole cloud of birds, and not infrequently a slow-sailing white-winged owl. Shortly after the Riomagno Gully, as it is called, passes this most interesting spot, it sinks, and runs for three miles under ground, and again reappears on the surface, and gurgles over the stones, as if nothing had happened. By the by, this is a common vagary of nature in Jamaica. For instance, the Rio Cobre, I think it is, which, after a subterranean course of three miles, suddenly gushes out of the solid rock at Bybrook estate, in a solid cube of clear cold water, three feet in diameter; and I remember, in a cruise that I had at another period of my life, in the leeward part of the Island, we came to an estate, where the supply of water for the machinery rose up within the bounds of the mill-dam itself, into which there was no flow, with such force, that above the spring, if I might so call it, the bubbling water was projected into a blunt cone, like the bottom of a cauldron, the apex of which was a foot higher than the level of the pond, although the latter was eighteen feet deep.
After an exceedingly pleasant day we returned home, and next morning, when I got out of bed, I complained of a violent itching and pain, a sort of nondescript sensation, a mixture of pain and pleasure in my starboard great toe, and on reconnoitring, I discovered it to be a good deal inflamed on the ball, round a blue spot about the size of a pinhead. Pegtop had come into the room, and while he was placing my clothes in order, I asked him “What this could be—gout, think you, Massa Pegtop—gout?”
“Gote, massa—gote—no, no, him chiger, massa—chiger—little something like one flea; poke him head under de kin, dere lay egg; ah, great luxury to creole gentleman and lady, dat chiger; sweet pain, creole miss say—nice for cratch him, him say.”
“Why, it may be a creole luxury, Pegtop, but I wish you would relieve me of it.”
“Surely, massa surely, if you wish it,” said Pegtop, in some surprise at my want of taste. “Lend me your penknife den, massa;” and he gabbled away as he extracted from my flesh the chiger bag-like a blue pill in size and colour.
“Oh, massa, top till you marry creole wife,—she will tell you me say true; ah, daresay Miss Mary himself love chiger to tickle him—to be sure him love to be tickle—him love to be tickle—ay, all Creole miss love to be tickle—he, he, he!”
By agreement, Mr Bang and I met Mr Stornaway this morning, in order to visit some other estates together, and during our ride I was particularly gratified by his company. He was a man of solid and very extensive acquirements, and far above what his situation in life at that time led one to expect. When I revisited the island some years afterwards, I was rejoiced to find that his intrinsic worth and ability had floated him up into a very extensive business, and I believe he is now a man of property. I rather think he is engaged in some statistical work connected with Jamaica, which, I am certain, will do him credit whenever it appears. Odd enough, the very first time I saw him, I said I was sure he would succeed in the world; and I am glad to find I was a true prophet. To return: Our chief object at present was to visit a neighbouring estate, the overseer of which was, we were led to believe from a message sent to Mr Bang, very ill with fever. He was a most respectable young man, Mr Stomaway told me, a Swede by birth, who had came over to England with his parents at the early age of eight years, where both he and his cousin Agatha had continued, until he embarked for the West Indies. This was an orphan girl whom his father had adopted, and both of them, as he had often told Mr Stornaway, had utterly forgotten their Swedish,—in fact, they understood no language but English at the time he embarked. I have been thus particular, from a very extraordinary phenomenon that occurred immediately, preceding his dissolution, of which I was a witness.
We rode up in front of the door, close to the fixed manger, where the horses and mules belonging to the busha are usually fed, and encountered a negro servant on a mule, with an umbrella-case slung across his back, and a portmanteau behind him, covered with the usual sheep’s fleece, and holding a saddle horse.