The knowledge of this hostile feeling soon spread throughout the settlement and adjacent towns, creating considerable excitement against Ormond. My plan and principles were approved by the natives as well as foreigners, so that warning was sent the Mongo, if any harm befell Joseph and Theodore, it would be promptly resented. Our native landlord, Ali-Ninpha, a Foulah by descent, told him boldly, in presence of his people, that the Africans were “tired of a mulatto Mongo;” and, from that day, his power dwindled away visibly, though a show of respect was kept up in consequence of his age and ancient importance.
During these troubles, the Areostatico returned to my consignment, and in twenty-two days was dispatched with a choice cargo of Mandingoes,—a tribe, which had become fashionable for house servants among the Havanese. But the luckless vessel was never heard of, and it is likely she went down in some of the dreadful gales that scourged the coast immediately after her departure.
CHAPTER XIII.
I had now grown to such sudden importance among the natives, that the neighboring chiefs and kings sent me daily messages of friendship, with trifling gifts that I readily accepted. One of these bordering lords, more generous and insinuating than the rest, hinted several times his anxiety for a closer connection in affection as well as trade, and, at length, insisted upon becoming my father-in-law!
I had always heard in Italy that it was something to receive the hand of a princess, even after long and tedious wooing; but now that I was surrounded by a mob of kings, who absolutely thrust their daughters on me, I confess I had the bad taste not to leap with joy at the royal offering. Still, I was in a difficult position, as no graver offence can be given a chief than to reject his child. It is so serious an insult to refuse a wife, that, high born natives, in order to avoid quarrels or war, accept the tender boon, and as soon as etiquette permits, pass it over to a friend or relation. As the offer was made to me personally by the king, I found the utmost difficulty in escaping. Indeed, he would receive no excuse. When I declined on account of the damsel’s youth, he laughed incredulously. If I urged the feebleness of my health and tardy convalescence, he insisted that a regular life of matrimony was the best cordial for an impaired constitution. In fact, the paternal solicitude of his majesty for my doubloons was so urgent that I was on the point of yielding myself a patient sacrifice, when Joseph came to my relief with the offer of his hand as a substitute.
The Gordian knot was cut. Prince Yungee in reality did not care so much who should be his son-in-law as that he obtained one with a white skin and plentiful purse. Joseph or Theodore, Saxon or Italian, made no difference to the chief; and, as is the case in all Oriental lands, the opinion of the lady was of no importance whatever.
I cannot say that my partner viewed this matrimonial project with the disgust that I did. Perhaps he was a man of more liberal philosophy and wider views of human brotherhood; at any rate, his residence in Africa gave him a taste not only for its people, habits, and superstitions, but he upheld practical amalgamation with more fervor and honesty than a regular abolitionist. Joseph was possessed by Africo-mania. He admired the women, the men, the language, the cookery, the music. He would fall into philharmonic ecstasies over the discord of a bamboo tom-tom. I have reason to believe that even African barbarities had charms for the odd Englishman; but he was chiefly won by the dolce far niente of the natives, and the Oriental license of polygamy. In a word, Joseph had the same taste for a full-blooded cuffee, that an epicure has for the haut gout of a stale partridge, and was in ecstasies at my extrication. He neglected his siestas and his accounts; he wandered from house to house with the rapture of an impatient bridegroom; and, till every thing was ready for the nuptial rites, no one at the factory had a moment’s rest.
As the bride’s relations were eminent folks on the upper part of the river, they insisted that the marriage ceremony should be performed with all the honorable formalities due to the lady’s rank. Esther, who acted as my mentor in every “country-question,” suggested that it would be contrary to the Englishman’s interest to ally himself with a family whose only motive was sordid. She strongly urged that if he persisted in taking the girl, he should do so without a “colungee” or ceremonial feast. But Joseph was obstinate as a bull; and as he doubted whether he would ever commit matrimony again, he insisted that the nuptials should be celebrated with all the fashionable splendor of high life in Africa.