THE CRUISE OF THE MIDGE. BY THE AUTHOR OF "TOM CRINGLE'S LOG." by Michael Scoll. ¿FRANKLIN LIBRARY EDITION.] HARTFORD: PUBLISHED BY SILAS ANDRUS & SON. 1846. THE CRUISE OF THE MIDGE. CHAPTER I. "How bright the sunshine dances in its joy, I HAD been for six months fourth heutenant of H. M. S. Gazelle, on board of winen Sir Oliver Oakplank had his broad pennant* hoisted, as the commander-in-chief on the African station. The last time we touched at Cape Coast we took in with us a Spanish felucca, that we had previously cut out of the Bonny river, with part of her cargo of slaves on board. She had cost us a hard tussle, and several of our people had fallen by the sword in the attack, but more afterwards from dysentery and marsh fever, the seeds of which had doubtless been sown in the pestilential estuary at the time of the attack, although there is no disputing that they were much more virulently developed afterwards than they would otherwise have been ́ by a week's exposure in open boats to the deleterious changes of the atmosphere. Our excellent commodore, therefore, the father of his crew, seeing the undeniable necessity of lessening the exposure of the men in such a villanous climate, instantly wrote home to the admiralty, requesting that half a dozen small vessels might be sent to him, of an easy draught of water, so that they might take charge of the boats, and afford a comfortable shelter to their crews; at the same time that they should be able to get over the bars, without damage, of the various African rivers, where the contraband Guineamen were in the habit of lurking. Tre that he practised what he preached, he instantly fitted out the captured telucca, on his own responsibility, manned her with five-and-twenty men, and gave the command of her to our third lieutenant. She had been despatched about a fortnight before in the direction of Fernando Po, and we had stood in on the morning of the day on which my narrative commences, to make Cape Formosa, which was the rendezvous fixed on between us. About three o'clock, P. M., when we were within ten miles of the cape, without any appearance of the tender, we fell in with a Liverpool trader, who was bound to the Brass river to load palm oil and sandal-wood. She reported that the night before they had come across a Spaniard, who fired into them when they sheered-to with an intent to speak him. The master said, that when first seen, the strange sail was standing right in for the river ahead of us; and, from the noises he heard, he was sure she had negroes on board. It was therefore conjectured that she was one of the vessels who had taken in part of her cargo of slaves at the Bonny river, and was now bound for the Nun or Brass river to compiere it. They were if any thing more confirmed in this by the circumstance of his keeping away, and standing to the south-west, the moment he found they were A broad red swallow-tailed flag, carried at the main-royal-masthead, indicative of the rank of commodore. hauling in for the land, as if anxious to mislead them, by inducing a belief that he was off for the West Indies or Brazil. This was the sum total of the information received from the Liverpool man; but the same afternoon we fell in with an American, who rejoiced our hearts by saying that he had that morning been chased by a vessel answering the description of the felucca, and immediately after we hove about, and stood out to sea again, making sail in the direction indicated. In consequence of our overhauling this vessel, the commodore had put off his dinner for an hour; and when all the ropes had been coiled down, and every thing made snug after tacking, he resumed his walk on the weather side of the quarter-deck, in company with Mr. David Sprawl, the first lieutenant. --- an The commodore was a red-faced little man, with a very irritable cast of countenance, which, however, was by no means a true index to his warm heart, for I verily believe that no commander was ever more beloved by officers and men than he was. He had seen a great deal of service, and had been several times wounded; once, in particular, very badly, by a grape-shot that had shattered his left thigh, and considerably shortened it, and therefore gave him a kick in his gallop, as he himself used to phrase it, until the day of his death. He was a wag in his way, and the officer now perambulating the deck alongside of him was an unfailing source of mirth; although the commodore never passed the limits of strict naval etiquette, or trespassed beyond the bounds of perfect good breeding in his fun. The gallant old fellow was dressed in faded nankeen trousers discoloured cotton stockings-shoes, with cornholes cut in the toes,ill-washed and rumpled white Marseilles waistcoat- and an old blue uniform coat, worn absolutely threadbare, white and soapy at the seams and elbows; each shoulder being garnished with a faded gold lace strap, which confined the epaulets when mounted, and that was only on a Sunday. His silk neckcloth had been most probably black once, but now it was a dingy brown; and he wore a most shocking bad hat - an old white beaver, with very broad brims, the snout of it fastened back to the crown with a lanyard of common spun-yarn, buttoned up, as it were, like the chapeaux in Charles the Second's time, to prevent it flapping down over his eyes. He walked backwards and forwards very quickly, taking two steps for Sprawl's one, and whenever he turned, he gave a loud stamp, and swung briskly about on the good leg as if it had been a pivot, giving a most curious indescribable flourish in the air with the wounded limb in the roundcoming, like the last quiver of Noblet's leg in an expiring pirouette. Lieutenant Sprawl, the officer with whom he was walking and keeping up an animated conversation, was also in no small degree remarkable in his externals, but in a totally different line. He was a tall man, at the very least six feet high, and stout in proportion; very square-shouldered; but, large as he was, his coat seemed to have been made to fit even a stouter person, for the shoulder-straps (I think that is the name) projected considerably beyond his shoulders, so that they gave the upper part of his figure a sharp ungainly appearance, like the projecting eaves of a Swiss cottage. Below these wide-spreading upper-works he tapered away to nothing at the loins, and over the hips he was not the girth of a growing lad. His thighs were very short, but his legs, from the knee down, were the longest I ever saw in man, reversing all one's notions of proportion or symmetry, for they gradually swelled out from the knee, until they ended in the ankle, which emulated, if it did not altogether surpass, the calf in diameter. But this was not all; for when you looked at him in a front view, his lower spars, from the knee down, were a perfect fac simile of the letter V reversed, that is, with the apex uppermost, while the long splay feet formed the strokes across, or the bases of the letter, into which the shanks or shin-bones were morticed amidships as nearly as may be, so that the heel projected aft very nearly as far as the toe did forward, as if he had been built after the model of some river-craft, to sail back wards or forwards as might be required, without either tacking or wearing. The feet were conspicuously stuck out before him, and kept cruising about of their own accord apparently, as if they were running away with the man. He had an immensely large head, with a great fell of coarse red hair, which hung down in greasy masses on each side of his pale freckled visage, until it blended into two immense whiskers, which he cultivated under his chin with great care, so that at length he appeared to be peeping through a fur collar, like a Madagascar orang-otang. His eyes were large, prominent, and of a deadly pale blue; his general loveliness being diversified by a most conspicuous squint. He had absolutely no eyebrows, but a curious nondescript sort of tumble-out forehead, as like an ill-washed winter-turnip in its phrenological developments as one could well imagine. As for his nose, it had the regular twist of a rifleman's powder-horn. But his lovely mouth, who shall describe it? Disdaining to claim acquaintance with the aforesaid beak, it had chosen its site under the left eye, so that a line- I here address myself to mathematical readers-drawn from the innermost corner of the right eye, and intersecting the tip of the snout, would have touched the right corner of the aforesaid hole in his face- it could be dignified with no other name, for, in sober reality, it more resembled a gash in a pumpkin, made by a clumsy bill-hook than any thing else. Lips he had none; and the first impression on one's mind when you saw him, was, Bless me - what an oddity! - the man has no mouth until he did make play with his potato-trap, and then it was like a gap suddenly split open in a piece of mottled freestone. It was altogether so much out of its latitude, that when he spoke, it seemed aside, as the players say; and when he drank his wine, he looked, for all the world, as if he had been pouring it into his ear. As he walked, he vehemently swung his arms backwards and forwards, as if they had been paddles necessary to propel him ahead, carrying on leisurely when he first turned, but gradually increasing his pace as he proceeded, until he sculled along at a terrible rate. So now if the admiring reader will take the trouble to dress this Adonis, I will furnish the apparel. Imprimis, he wore a curious wee hat, with scarcely any brim, the remains of the nap bleached by a burning sun, and splashed and matted together from the pelting of numberless showers, and the washing up of many a salt-sea spray, but carefully garnished, nevertheless, with a double stripe of fresh gold-lace, and a naval button on the left side. Add to this, an old-fashioned uniform coat, very far through, as we say; long-waisted, with remarkably short skirts, but the strap for the epaulet new and bright as the loop on the hat; and then swathe him in a dingy white kerseymere waistcoat, over which dangled a great horn eyeglass, suspended by a magnificent new broad watered black ribbon; and, finally, take the trouble to shroud the lower limbs of the Apollo in ancient duck trousers, extending about half-way down the calf of the leg, if calf he had, leaving his pillar-like ankles conspicuously observable; and the aforesaid reader will have a tolerably accurate idea of the presence and bearing of our amiable and accomplished messmate, Mr. David Sprawl. Rum subject: as he certainly was to look at, he was a most excellent warm-hearted person at bottom, straight-forward and kind to the men, never blazoning or amplifying their faults, but generally, on the other hand, softening inem, and often astonishing the poor fellows by his out-of-the-way and unexpected kindness and civility, for he plumed himself on the general polish of his manners, whether to equals or inferiors, and they repaid the compliment by christening him, at one time, " Old Bloody Politeful," and "Davie Doublepipe" at another, from a peculiarity that we shall presently describe. |