As the sun ascended in the sky, my wound became irritated by exercise, and the inflammation produced a feverish torment in which I groaned as I lay extended in the stern-sheets. By noon a breeze sprang up from the south-west, so that the oars and table-cloth supplied a square sail which wafted us about three miles an hour, while my boy rigged an awning with the blankets and boat-hooks. Thus, half reclining, I steered landward till midnight, when I took in the sail and lay-to on the calm ocean till morning. Next day the breeze again favored us; and, by sundown, I came up with the coasting canoe of a friendly Mandingo, into which I at once exchanged my quarters, and falling asleep, never stirred till he landed me on the Islands de Loss.
My wound kept me a close and suffering prisoner in a hut on the isles for ten days during which I despatched a native canoe some thirty five or forty miles to the Rio Pongo with news of my disaster, and orders for a boat with an equipment of comforts. As my clerk neglected to send a suit of clothes, I was obliged to wear the Mandingo habiliments till I reached my factory, so that during my transit, this dress became the means of an odd encounter. As I entered the Rio Pongo, a French brigantine near the bar was the first welcome of civilization that cheered my heart for near a fortnight. Passing her closely, I drifted alongside, and begged the commander for a bottle of claret. My brown skin, African raiment, and savage companions satisfied the skipper that I was a native, so that, with a sneer, he, of course, became very solicitous to know “where I drank claret last?” and pointing to the sea, desired me to quench my thirst with brine!
It was rather hard for a suffering Italian to be treated so cavalierly by a Gaul; but I thanked the fellow for his civility in such excellent French, that his tone instantly changed, and he asked—“au nom de Dieu, where I had learned the language!” It is likely I would have rowed off without detection, had I not just then been recognized by one of his officers who visited my factory the year before.
In a moment the captain was in my boat with a bound, and grasping my hands with a thousand pardons, insisted I should not ascend the river till I had dined with him. He promised a plate of capital soup;—and where, I should like to know, is the son of France or Italy who is ready to withstand the seduction of such a provocative? Besides this, he insisted on dressing me from his scanty wardrobe; but as he declined all subsequent remuneration, I confined my bodily improvement to a clean shirt and his wiry razors.
While the bouillon was bubbling in the coppers, I got an insight into the condition of Rio Pongo concerns since my departure. The Dane was off after a quarrel with Ormond, who gave him but a hundred negroes for his cargo; and a Spanish brig was waiting my arrival,—for the boy I sent home from the Isles de Loss had reported my engagement, capture, and escape.
La soupe sur la table, we attacked a smoking tureen of bouillon gras, while a heaping dish of toasted bread stood in the middle. The captain loaded my plate with two slices of this sunburnt material, which he deluged with a couple of ladles of savory broth. A long fast is a good sauce, and I need not assert that I began sans façon. My appetite was sharp, and the vapor of the liquid inviting. For a while there was a dead silence, save when broken by smacking and relishing lips. Spoonful after spoonful was sucked in as rapidly as the heat allowed; and, indeed, I hardly took time to bestow a blessing on the cook. Being the guest of the day, my plate had been the first one served, and of course, was the first one finished. Perhaps I rather hurried myself, for lenten diet made me greedy and I was somewhat anxious to anticipate the calls of my companions on the tureen. Accordingly, I once more ballasted my plate with toast, and, with a charming bow and a civil “s’il vous plait,” applied, like Oliver Twist, “for more.”
As the captain was helping me to the second ladle, he politely demanded whether I was “fond of the thick;” and as I replied in the affirmative, he made another dive to the bottom and brought up the instrument with a heaping mass in whose centre was a diminutive African skull, face upwards, gaping at the guests with an infernal grin!
My plate fell from my hand at the tureen’s edge. The boiling liquid splashed over the table. I stood fascinated by the horrible apparition as the captain continued to hold its dreadful bones in view. Presently my head swam; a painful oppression weighed at my heart; I was ill; and, in a jiffy, the appalling spectre was laid beneath the calm waters of the Rio Pongo.
Before sundown I made a speedy retreat from among the anthropophagi; but all their assurances, oaths, and protestations, could not satisfy me that the broth did not owe its substance to something more human than an African baboon.