The Cruise of the Frolic

by William Henry Giles Kingston

Captain Staunton descended to his cabin, and feverish and ill from long watching and the effects of the pestiferous climate, he threw himself into his cot, and endeavoured to snatch a few hours’ repose, to better prepare himself for the fresh exertions he expected to be called on to make. But sleep, which kindly so seldom neglects to visit the seaman’s eyelids, when wooed even amid the raging tempest, refused for some time to come at his call.

“I would sacrifice many a year’s pay to catch that fellow,” he continued, as he soliloquised half aloud. “The monstrous villain! while he lives I feel that the stain yet remains on the cloth he once disgraced. We will yet show him that the honour of the service cannot be insulted with impunity, although he dares our vengeance by venturing among us when he knows every vessel on the station is on the watch for him. And yet I once regarded that man as a friend; I loved him almost as a brother, for I thought his heart beat with the most noble sentiments. I thought him capable of the like deeds; but all the time he must have been a most accomplished hypocrite, though still he has one good quality, he is brave, or perhaps, it may be, he possesses rather physical insensibility to danger and utter recklessness of all consequences. He started fairly in life, and at one time gave good promise of rising in his profession. I knew him to be wild and irreligious; but I fancied his faults arose from thoughtlessness and high spirit, and I hoped that experience of their ill effects and a good example would cure them; but I now see that vice, from an ill-regulated education, was deeply rooted in him, and, alas! has that good example which might have saved him always been set him? I fear not. Ah! if those in command could foresee the dreadful results of their own acts, of their careless expressions, they would keep a better watch over themselves, and often shudder with horror at the crime and misery they have caused.”

With a prayer to Heaven to enable him to avoid the faults of which he felt with pain that he had himself too often been guilty, the commander of the brig fell asleep.

The officer of the watch, meantime, continued his walk on the quarter-deck, his thoughts taking a turn very similar to those of his chief, for they had often together discussed the subject, and the same train of ideas were naturally suggested by the same circumstance, as he also had known the person of whom the captain was thinking.

The “Sylph” was at this time some miles off the African coast, which, although not seen from the deck, was faintly distinguishable from the masthead; it appeared like a long blue line drawn on the ocean with a slight haze hanging over it, scarcely to be perceived by unpractised eyes. The part visible was about the mouth of the Pongos River, a well-known slave depot, the favourite resort of the Spanish South American slavers.

The surface of the ocean was smooth, although occasionally ruffled by a light breeze, which, coming from seaward, served to cool the brows of the crew, and restore some vigour to their exhausted limbs; yet there was the usual swell, which seldom leaves the bosom of the Atlantic to perfect tranquillity. It came in from the west, slowly and silently, making the vessel roll from side to side like a drunken man. Though she was not, it must be understood, at anchor, she had not a stitch of canvas spread which would have contributed, had there been any wind, to steady her. All her sails were closely furled, but her studding-sail booms were at their yard-arms, their gear was rove, and the studding-sails themselves were on deck, ready to set in a moment. The boats, too, were clear to hoist out in an instant, and there, was every sign on deck that the now apparently listless crew would, at first sound of the boatswain’s whistle, spring into life and activity, and that the now bare tracery of spars and rigging would, the second after, be covered with a broad sheet of snowy canvas.

The “Sylph” had been about a year on the coast. When she left England, her officers and crew were a particularly fine, healthy set of men, and the whole of them could scarcely, in the course of their lives, have mustered a month’s illness among them. Since they came to their present station, the second lieutenant and second master had died, as had two midshipmen and thirteen of the crew, and nearly all the remainder had, more or less, suffered, few retaining any traces of their former ruddy and healthy appearance.

They had, however, to be sure, before being well acclimated, or having learned the necessary precautions to take against illness, been exposed to a good deal of hard service in boats up the rivers, where were sown the seeds of the disease which afterwards proved so fatal among them. Fresh officers and men had been appointed to fill the places of those who had died, and the brig was now again the same model of discipline and beauty which she had before been. When Captain Staunton joined the brig, he is reported to have called the men aft, and to have made them a speech much to this effect:—

“Now, my men, that you may not have any long discussions as to the character of your new commander, I wish to let you clearly understand that I never overlook drunkenness, or any other crime whatever, either in my officers or men. I shall not say whether I like flogging or not, but while it is awarded by the articles of war, I shall inflict it. Remember, however, I would much rather reward than punish. The men who do their duty well and cheerfully, I will advance as far as I have the power. I wish this to be a happy ship, and it will be your own faults if you do not make it so. Now pipe down.”

The men agreed, as they sat in knots together after they had knocked off work for the day, that they liked the cut of their new skipper’s jib, and that his speech, though short, was good, and had no rigmarole in it.