Michael Scott

“ The bugles sounded, the cannon roared, the musketry rattled, and the men cheered, and all was hurra, and fire, and fury. The breeze was strong enough to carry all the smoke forward, and I saw the deck of the schooner, where the moment before all was still and motionless, and filled with dark figures, till there scarcely appeared standing room, at once converted into a shambles. The blasting fiery tempest had laid low nearly the whole mass, like a maize plant before a hurricane; and such a cry arose, as if “Men fought on earth, and fiends in upper air.” ”

“ The water in the bay now began to ebb suddenly, until it retired about twenty paces, leaving a broad white sandy beach where before there had been but a narrow stripe of pebbles. In another moment it again rushed in with a loud shaling noise—I coin the word for the sound—in bores nearly ten feet high, and thundered against the rocks, with a violence as if it had been the swell of the everlasting deep, hove by a storm against their iron ribs; and flashing up in white smoke all round us and over us. ”

“ Thereupon a blood-red glare shot up into the cold blue sky, as if a volcano had burst forth from beneath the mighty deep, followed by a roar, and a shattering crash, and a mingling of unearthly cries and groans, and a concussion of the air, and of the water, as if our whole broadside had been fired at once. Then a solitary splash here, and a dip there, and short sharp yells, and low choking bubbling moans, as the hissing fragments of the noble vessel we had seen fell into the sea, and the last of her gallant crew vanished for ever beneath that pale broad moon. ”

“ As I expected, to any one looking at us from windward, we must have become invisible, against the heavy bank of black clouds down to leeward; and, in corroboration of this, the strange vessel gradually emerged from out the silvery dazzle, and glided majestically down the glorious flow of bright moonlight, standing right for us, evidently unaware of our vicinity. She was not steered so steadily, but that I could perceive she was a ship, sailing dead before it with all sail set to woo the faint breeze; royals, sky-sails, and studding-sails aloft and alow. ”

“ Sophie Duquesné and Helen Hudson running about the small walks of the rocky parterre, dashing the water spangles from the flowers with their light feet, and laughing loudly as they strove to catch Dicky, who kept just beyond their reach, squealing with child-like joy, and splashing them: a perfect shower of spray descending all the time on the beautiful urchin's own curly pate; while the plantain leaves were shaking in the breeze, and checkering the blue sky overhead. At length De Walden caught him, and swung him out of the water by the arms into Helen Hudson's lap. ”

“ Now each mast, with its gently swelling canvass, the higher sails decreasing in size, until they tapered away nearly to a point, though topsail, topgallant sail, royal and skysails, showed like towers of snow, and the cordage like silver threads, while each dark spar seemed to be of ebony, fished with ivory, as a flood of cold, pale, mild light streamed from the beauteous planet over the whole stupendous machine, lighting up the sand white decks, on which the shadows of the men, and of every object that intercepted the moonbeams, were cast as strongly as if the planks had been inlaid with jet. ”

“ A huge green wave was curling its monstrous crest, like revolving wheels of foam, close aboard of us astern, and pursuing us with a hoarse growl, increasing to a roar, like a sea monster rushing on its prey.
Lanyard had only time to sing out, "All hands, secure yourselves," when it rolled in over the tafferel, and swept the deck fore and aft, washing boats, hen-coops, spare spars, and every thing that was not part and portion of the solid deck and upperworks, overboard, and submerging us several feet under water. ”

“ The beauty of St Ann's, the principal grazing parish of Jamaica, surpassed any notion I had previously formed of it;—the whole district being a sea of gently undulating hill and valley, covered with the most luxuriant waving Guinea grass—across which the racking cloudlets, borne on the wings of the fresh and invigorating breeze, chased each other cheerily as if it had been one vast hay field, ready for the scythe—thickly interspersed with groves of pimento and fruit-trees, whose picturesque situations no capability man could possibly improve. ”

“ MONODY ON THE DEATH OF SIR JOHN MOORE. Farewell, thou pillar of the war, Warm-hearted soldier, Moore, farewell, In honour’s firmament a star, As bright as ere in glory fell. Deceived by weak or wicked men, How gallantly thou stood’st at bay, Like lion hunted to his den, Let France tell, on that bloody day. No boastful splendour round thy bier, No blazon’d trophies o’er thy grave; But thou had’st more, the soldier’s tear, The heart-warm offering of the brave. On Lusitania’s rock-girt coast, All coffinless thy relics lie, Where all but honour bright was lost, Yet thy example shall not die. ”

“ Another flash down to leeward, in the direction of the felucca, and presently she burned a blue light, which cast a lurid wake on the rolling waters, cresting the sparkling waves with a wavering line of unearthly light. It lit up the little vessel and her white sail, and the whole horizon in her neighbourhood, with a blue ghostly glare, across which, as a bright background, we suddenly saw the tall spars, dark sails, and opake hull of a large polacre brig intervene, as she gradually slid along, rising and falling majestically on the midnight sea, between us and the tender. ”

“ Every negro carries a string of one kind or another with him in the crown of his hat, and three or four black paws were in an instant groping for Jacob Twig's hand in the dark with pieces of twine.
"Hillo, what is that?" as an auxiliary-current, more than ankle deep, began to flow down the road with a loud ripple from behind us, thus threatening to cut off our retreat—"Mind we are not in a scrape here!" cried I.
"If we be, we can't better it," shouted Twig—"Here, gentlemen, give me your cards, will ye?'
"Cards—cards!" ejaculated Flamingo and I in a breath. ”

“ Oh, my dear boy, you and I have hitherto consorted together on the deck of life, so to speak, with the bright joyous sun sparkling, and the blue heavens laughing overhead, and the clear green sea dancing under foot, and the merry breeze buzzing past us right cheerily. We have seen but the fair-weather side of each other, Thomas, without considering that all men have their deep feelings, that lie far, far down in the hold of their hearts, were they but stirred up. ”

“ Sprawl was roused out, and in a few seconds we were in our own tiny skiff, and approaching the frigate. All continued dark and dismal, as we looked up at her black hull, dark sails, and tall spars. She was rolling heavily, the masts and yards groaning, the bulkheads creaking and screaming, and the topsails fluttering and grumbling, until the noise, every now and then, ended in a sounding thump, as if the old ship, in all her parts, were giving audible indications of her impatience of the tedious calm ”

“ Look! how the clear green water, as she lurches, pours out of the afterleech of the sail like a cascade! Now! she is buried again; no! buoyant as cork—she dances over it like a wild-duck. See! how she tips up her round stern, and slides down the liquid hollow; once more she catches the breeze on the opposite rise of the sea; her sails tearing her along up the watery acclivity, as if they would drag the spars out of her. ”

“ I had never slept on shore out of Kingston before; the night season in the country in dear old England, we all know, is usually one of the deepest stillness—here it was any thing but still;—as the evening closed in, there arose a loud humming noise, a compound of the buzzing, and chirping, and whistling, and croaking of numberless reptiles and insects, on the earth, in the air, and in the water. ”

“ The field negroes were crowding round in great dismay, and the house servants were no less so; but, amidst all this hubbub—lo!—the beautiful fountain was once more bubbling, and hissing, and splashing in its rocky basin, and amongst the leaves, as cheerily as if it had never intermitted at all.
"The old one has slaked his thirst. You see we have got back our purling stream again, Mr Hudson," said Listado. ”

“ All was silent, the sun shone clown upon us like the concentrated rays of a burning glass, and there was no breeze to dissipate the heavy dank mist that hovered over the surface of the unwholesome canal, nor was there any appearance of a living thing, save and except a few startled waterfowl, and some guanoes on the trees, and now and then an alligator, like a black log of charred wood, would roll off a slimy bank of brown mud, with a splash into the water. ”

“ But all this time I could see nothing like the teal we were in pursuit of, although it was as clear as mud that the reeds all round us were alive with something or another. At length, as the morning lightened, and the clouds broke away, and the steamy sheet of water began to reflect them and our dark figures, and the trees and other objects on the margin, a line of ten or a dozen large birds emerged from the darkness and mist at the end where Flamingo was situated, and began slowly to sail towards us in regular line of battle. ”

“ I love not man the less, but nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the universe, and feel What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.’
“Yes, even here where nature is all beautiful and every thing, and man abject and nothing even here, Tom, amidst the loneliness of earth, rugged and half-mad as you must sometimes have thought me, a fellow wholly made up of quips and jests,—even I at this moment could, like an aboriginal Charibl of the land, ‘lift up my voice to the Great Spirit,’ and kneel, and weep, and pray.” ”

“ About noon every thing was deadly still,—the cattle had betaken themselves to the small river, where they stood listlessly chewing their cuds, as if overpowered by the density of the air. Not a bird was hopping in the no longer vocal trees; the very lizards were still: the negroes employed in cleaning the coffee pieces worked in silence, in place of shouting and laughing, and gabbling to each other, as is their wont—and when the driver or black superintendent gave his orders, the few words he uttered sounded loud and hollow, echoing from hill to hill. ”

“ But suffering, that scathes the heart, does not always make it callous; and I feel much of the woman hanging about mine still, even now, when the tide is on the turn with me, and the iron voice of the inexorable First—Lieutenant, Time, has sung out, “Strike the bell eight,”—every chime smiting on my soul as if an angel spoke, to warn me, that my stormy forenoon watch is at length over—that the sun, now passing the meridian, must soon decline towards the western horizon, and who shall assure himself of a cloudless setting. ”

“ Embraced by two of the huge armlike limbs of the leafy monarch, and blending its branches gracefully, as if clinging for support, grew a wide-spreading star-apple; its leaves, of the colour of the purple beech, undulating gently in the sea-breeze, upturned their silvery undersides to the sun, contrasting beautifully with the oak-like foliage of the cotton-tree. Half a dozen turkey buzzards, the Jamaica vulture, were clustered in the star apple-tree, with a single bird perched as a sentry on the topmost branch of the giant to which it clung ”

“ You never can go into a party nowadays, that you don’t meet with some shallow, prosing, pestilent ass of a fellow, who thinks that empty sound is conversation; and not unfrequently there is a spice of malignity in the blockhead’s composition; but a creature of this calibre you can wither, for it is not worth crushing, by withholding the sunshine of your countenance from it, or by leaving it to drivel on, until the utter contempt of the whole company claps to change the figure—a wet night—cap as an extinguisher on it, and its small stinking flame flickers and goes out of itself. ”

“ The majesty of the human form, all dim and mangled though it was, like a faint, but sacred halo, had quelled the fierceness of their nature, and the body of the suicide was still unbroken, even after the lapse of two days, except by the shattering of the pistol-shot fired by his own sacrilegious hands. Had it been the carcass of an ox, twelve hours could not have run by, before the naked skeleton would have been bleaching in the sun and wind. ”

“ It was now the evening, near nightfall, and we had been so intent on beating our awkward-looking opponent, that we had none of us time to look at the splendid scene that burst upon our view, on rounding a precipitous rock, from the crevices of which some magnificent trees shot up—their gnarled trunks and twisted branches overhanging the canal where we were pulling, and anticipating the fast-falling darkness that was creeping over the fair face of nature ”

“ The waning planet seemed to linger on the hill, and shed a long sickly wake on the midnight tarn, that sleeped in the hollow of the mountain, bright and smooth as if the brown moss had been inlaid with polished steel, except where a wild-duck glided over the shining surface, or the wing of the slow-sailing owl flitted winnowingly across, dimming it for a moment, like a mirror breathed upon. ”

“ The sea-breeze blew strong, until it reached within half a mile of the shore, where it stopped short, shooting in cat’s-paws occasionally into the smooth belt of water beyond, where the long unbroken swell rolled like molten silver in the rising sun, without a ripple on its surface, until it dashed its gigantic undulations against the face of the precipitous cliffs on the shore, and flew up in smoke. ”

“ You would be the envy of all the mermaids of the ocean if they saw you—but I believe they are not given to walk much in woods. Miss Hudson's beautiful face is of a cool refreshing pea-green, as I am a gentleman; and her fair nose of the colour of a grey parrot's bill, or an unboiled lobster's claw,—as for Mademoiselle Duquesné—may I die an ould maid, if you are not a delicate shade darker—and look if the child don't look as green as a fairy. Did ever mortal man see such a shamrock of a picanniny? ”

“ It was striking to see the three merchant-ships gradually draw out from the land, until we were all clustered together in a bunch, with a half a gale of wind curling the blue waves within musket-shot, while all was long swell and smooth water with us. At length the breeze reached us, and we made sail with our convoy to the southward and eastward, the lumbering merchantmen crowding every inch of canvass, while we could hardly keep astern, under close-reefed topsails, foresail, jib, and spanker. ”

“ The clouds above us, surcharged with fire and water, formed a leaden coloured arch over the entrance to the cove, that spanned the uproar of dark white-crested waves, boiling and rolling in smoky wreaths, and lancing out ragged shreds from their lower edges, that shot down and shortened like a fringe of streamers, from which the forked lightning crankled out every now and then clear and bright. ”

“ But by this time we were deucedly tired, and Massa Aaron’s mansion, situated on its little airy hill above a sea of canes, which rose and fell before the passing breeze like the waves of the ocean, was the most consolatory object in the view; and thither we drove is fast as our wearied horses could carry us, and found every thing most carefully prepared for our reception. ”

“ Never was there a more beautiful spot; so sequestered, no sound being heard in the vicinity but the rushing of the breeze through the highest branches of the trees; for every thing slept motionless and still down below in the cool checkering shadow and sleepy sunlight where we were—the gurgling of the stream, that sparkled past in starlike flashes, and the melancholy lowing of the kine on the hillside above. When the Kingston gentleman first saw the "John Crows," as they are called, he exchanged glances with my uncle, as much as to say, "Ah! my worst fears are about being realized." ”

“ Scorched by the heat of the sun’s fierce light, The sweetest flowers are bending most Upon their slender stems; More faint are they than if tempest tost, Till they drink of the sparkling gems That fall from the eye of night. Hark! from lattices guitars are tinkling, And though in heaven the stars are twinkling, No tell-tale moon looks over the mountain, To peer at her pale cold face in the fountain ”

“ The shore, to the distance of a bow-shot from the water all around us, was low, marshy, and covered with an impervious jungle of thick strong reeds and wild canes, with here and there a thicket of mangroves; a little farther off, the land swelled into lofty hills, covered to the very summit with heavy timber, but every thing had a moist, green, steamy appearance, as if it had been the region of perpetual rain. ”

“ The moon shone strong on the upper part of his countenance, while the yellow smoky glare of the candle over which he bent, blending harshly and inharmoniously with the pale silver light, fell full on his uncouth figure, and on his long scraggy bare neck and chin and cheeks, giving altogether a most unearthly expression to his savage features, from the conflicting tints and changing shadows cast by the flickering moonbeams streaming fitfully through the skylight, as the vessel rolled to and fro, and by the large torchlike candle as it wavered in the night wind. ”

“ But the fire was quicker than they. The smouldering smoke that was rising like a pillar of cloud from the fore hatchway, was now streaked with tongues of red flame, which, licking the masts and spars, ran up and caught the sails and rigging. In an instant, the fire spread to every part of the gear aloft, while the other element, the sea, was also striving for the mastery in the destruction of the doomed vessel; for our shot, or the fall of the carronade into the hold, had started some of the bottom planks, and she was fast settling down by the head. ”

“ High overhead, the red cross, that for a thousand years “has braved the battle and the breeze,” blew out strong from the peak, like a sheet of flickering white flame, or a thing instinct with life, struggling to tear away the ensign haulyards, and to escape high into the clouds; while, from the main-royal-masthead, the long white pennant streamed upwards into the azure heavens, like a ray of silver light. Oh! it was a sight “most beautiful to see,” as the old song hath it,——-but I confess I would have preferred that pleasure from t’other side of the hedge. ”

“ At every wheel round Mr Bang slewed his head a little on one side, and peeped in at one of her bright eyes, and then tossing his cranium on t’other side, took a squint in at the other, and then cast his eyes towards the roof, and muttered with his lips as if he had been shot all of a heap by the blind boy’s but-shaft; but every now and then as we passed, the rogue would stick his tongue in his cheek, yet so slightly as to be perceptible to no one but myself. ”