Tom Cringle's Log

by Michael Scott

The giant laughed.

“Damn the body, he must have been a tailor!—Charge, my fine fellows, and throw the constables out of the window, and the stewards after them. Every man his bird; and here goes for my Cock Robin.” With that he made a grab at his Lilliputian antagonist, but missed him, as he slid away amongst the women like an eel, while his pursuer, brandishing his wooden arm on high, to which I now perceived, for the first time, that there was a large steel hook appended, exclaimed in a broad Scotch accent, “Ah, if I had but caught the creature, I would have clapt this in his mouth, and played him like a salmon.”

At this signal, in poured the mass of soldiers and sailors; the constables vanished in an instant; the stewards were driven back upon the ladies; and such fainting and screaming, and swearing and threatening, and shying of cards, and fixing of time and place for a cool turn in the morning, it had never been my good fortune to witness before or since. My wig! thought I, a precious country, where a man’s life may be periled by the fashion of the covering to his nakedness!

Next day, Mr Fyall, who, I afterwards learned, was a most estimable man in substantials, although somewhat eccentric in small matters, called and invited me to accompany him on a cruise amongst some of the estates under his management. This was the very thing I desired, and three days afterwards I left my kind friends in Kingston, and set forth on my visit to Mr Fyall, who lived about seven miles from town..

The morning was fine as usual, although about noon the clouds, thin and fleecy and transparent at first, but gradually settling down more dense and heavy, began to congregate on the summit of the Liguanea Mountains, which rise about four miles distant, to a height of near 5000 feet, in rear of the town. It thundered too a little now and then in the same direction, but this was an every-day occurrence in Jamaica at this season, and as I had only seven miles to go, off I started in a gig of mine host’s, with my portmanteau well secured under a tarpawlin, in defiance of all threatening appearances, crowding sail, and urging the noble roan that had me in tow close upon thirteen knots. I had not gone above three miles, however, when the sky in a moment changed from the intense glare of a tropical noontide to the deepest gloom, as if a bad angel had suddenly overshadowed us, and interposed his dark wings between us and the blessed sun; indeed, so instantaneous was the effect, that it reminded me of the withdrawing of the foot-lights in a theatre. The road now wound round the base of a precipitous spur from the Liguanea Mountains, which, instead of melting onto the level country by gradual decreasing undulations, shot boldly out nearly a mile from the main range, and so abruptly, that it seemed mortised into the plain, like a rugged promontory running into a frozen lake. On looking up along the ridge of this prong, I saw the lowering mass of black clouds gradually spread out, and detach themselves from the summits of the loftier mountains, to which they had clung the whole morning, and begin to roll slowly down the hill, seeming to touch the tree tops, while along their lower edges hung a fringe of dark vapour, or rather shreds of cloud in rapid motion, that shifted about, and shot out and shortened like streamers.

As yet there was no lightning nor rain, and in the expectation of escaping the shower, as the wind was with me, I made more sail, pushing the horse into a gallop, to the great discomposure of the negro who sat beside me.

“Massa, you can’t escape it, you are galloping into it; don’t massa hear de sound of de rain coming along against de wind, and smell de earthy smell of him like one new-made grave?”

“The sound of the rain.” In another clime, long, long ago, I had often read at my old mother’s knee, “And Elijah said unto Ahab, there is a sound of abundance of rain, prepare thy chariot, and get thee down, that the rain stop thee not; and it came to pass, in the meanwhile, that the heaven was dark with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain.”

I looked, and so it was, for in an instant a white sheet of the heaviest rain I had ever seen (if rain it might be called, for it was more like a water-spout) fell from the lower edge of the black cloud, with a strong rushing noise, that increased as it approached to a loud roar like that of a waterfall. As it came along, it seemed to devour the rocks and trees, for they disappeared behind the watery screen the instant it reached them.

We saw it a-head of us for more than a mile coming along the road, preceded by a black line from the moistening of the white dust, right in the wind’s eye, and with such an even front, that I verily believe it was descending in bucketsful on my horse’s head, while as yet not one drop had reached me. At this moment the adjutant-general of the forces, Colonel F——, of the Coldstream Guards, in his tandem, drawn by two sprightly blood bays, with his servant, a light boy, mounted Creole fashion on the leader, was coming up in my wake at a spot where the road sank into a hollow, and was traversed by a watercourse already running knee deep, although dry as a bone but the minute before.