Michael Scott

“ 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." ”

“ I had no conception they could have got the anchor up so speedily."
"Anchor up!" groaned Hause; "why, there—there is the anchor, cable and all," pointing to the buoy. "The brig is run away with by some piratical rascals, sir," cried he, increasing his exclamation to a roar—"the cable has been slipped—oh, I am ruined, I am ruined—for ever ruined—the sweet little Ballahoo has been cut out by pirates—as sure as fate, the bloody pirates are off with her," and he burst into a passion of tears, and wept like the veriest child. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The highest and lightest sails of the schooner began to flap and shake.
"There comes the breeze, Mr M'Taggart," cheeped a wee mid on board.
"All hands furl sails," was growled along her deck by the hoarse voice of the boatswain. "There it comes—haul down the square sail." Round swung the Spider, with her topsail, top-gallant sail, and royal all aback, and her fore and aft sails undulating and rumbling in the breeze; presently she gradually dropped a fathom or two astern, as more scope was given her. "In royal—hands by the topsail, and topgallant clewlines—fore and main brails;" ”

“ 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. ”

“ It never rains but it pours. "Hark! an earthquake!" and, as if a volcano had burst forth beneath our feet, at this instant of time the pirate schooner under the cliff blew up with an explosion that shook earth, air, and water—shooting the pieces of burning wreck in every direction, that hissed like meteors through the storm, and fell thickly all around us.
The Midge, the Midge—she slides out of the smoke! See! she gains the offing.
But the Avenger of Blood is behind; for the Spider had now cleared the harbour's mouth, and was in hot pursuit. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ At length, in a temporary lull of the rain, I thought I heard the shout of a human voice from the opposite bank, blending with the roar of the stream.
"Ay, ay," cried Jacob—"there, don't you hear people on the other side?—so here goes."
"Hillo, who the deuce has knocked off my hat?" cried Flamingo.
"Why don't you stand on one side then, or get yourself shortened by the knees? such a steeple is always in the way," bawled Twig. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The arm that was strongly knit and vigorous, is now weak and trembling—for which you don't care one farthing. The spirits, then so light and elastic that they danced half in air, in the merry breeze and jocund sunshine, over every happy undulation of the clear smooth swell of early life, are now dead and water-logged, like a swamped buoy that has been staved by the rough weather we all must look to meet with;—never to float again. My Nelly was then Miss Helen Hudson, a happy laughing girl ”

“ My father, mamma, Mr Duquesné, Sophie, and Henry De Walden, all unite in kindest regards to you. And now, my dearest Benjamin, do not be alarmed at this blistered manuscript; my heart is melting, and weeping relieves me, but I am not unhappy—oh, no—but anxious—oh, how anxious!—I will now retire to my closet, and cast myself before the rock of my trust, and pray to my God, and your God, in whose great hand we stand, to bless us both; and speedily, if it be his good pleasure, to bring us once more together, never to be parted. ”

“ Oh, quite one gentleman—plenty money—plenty grog—Ah, wery nice peoples," was all that Quashie knew or seemed to care about—at least all that he would say.
While we were yet irresolute as to the prudence of stripping the mast, with such gentry almost within earshot, a small dory, or light canoe, shoved her black snout round the headland on which the cocoa-nuts grew, paddled by a solitary figure in the stern, with an animal of some kind or another stuck up, monkey-fashion, in the bow, which, as it came nearer, I perceived to be a most noble Spanish bloodhound. ”

“ We were now a week at sea; the morning had been extremely squally, but towards noon the breeze became steadier, and we again made more sail, after which Lennox, the master of the schooner, and I, went to dinner. This skipper, by the way, was a rather remarkable personage,—first, he rejoiced in the euphoneous, but somewhat out of the way, appellation of Tobias Tooraloo; secondly, his face was not a tragic volume, but a leaf out of a farce. It was for all the world like the monkey face of a cocoa-nut; there being only three holes perceptible to the naked eye in it ”

“ The hillsides had even become perceptibly greener in one night's time—in short, Dame Nature had got her face well washed, and every thing was clean, and fresh, and shining. The sea-breeze was roughening the water in the offing, but in the cove, on which we looked down, all was as yet as smooth as glass. The undulations flowing towards the harbour's mouth, occasioned by what I would call the echo of the ground swell, or the reverberation of the send of the sea from the rocky beach, were scarcely perceptible ”

“ 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. ”

“ At this, there was a rush of men from below up the schooner's hatchways, and her decks were in a trice covered with them. The next moment she kept by the wind, as if determined to bring us dead to leeward. There was now no doubt of her real character, so the captain seized the helm, and luffed up across his bows so suddenly, that I thought he had carried away his jib-boom, but he was as quick as we were, and by keeping away, cleared us, just shaving our stern; but not before he got our broadside of cannon and musketry plump into his bows. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Ballahoo had let go her anchor in five fathoms water, so clear, and the sand at the bottom so white and free of weeds or rocks, that when we were about & cable's length distant from the anchor, it appeared from the refraction of the sun's rays, to be buoyed up, and to float on the surface of the gentle swell that rolled in from the offing—the shank, flukes, and stock twisting and twining, and the cable waving in its whole length, as if the solid anchor had been a living thing in the fangs of a gigantic watersnake. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The spot where we stood seemed to be the eastern headland, or cape, of a small and most beautiful bay, which opened to our view down to leeward. Beyond us, out at sea, the water was roughened by a fiery sea-breeze—to use the West Indian phrase—the blue water being thickly speckled with white crests; and from the speed with which the white sails in the offing slid along their liquid way, like feathers, or snow-flakes floating down the wind, it might be called a brisk gale. ”

“ The next moment he cried aloud and imploringly to the demon in human shape, into whose power he had indeed, against all probability, fallen, "Where are you going to take me, Mr Adderfang?" The only answer he gave him was a brutal kick on the mouth. "I have had no communication with the schooner in the offing. Don't you see I am wounded by her shot? I have had another blow. Mind what you do, or you shall repent this," cried the poor fellow again as they dragged him along.
"Let him go," I sung out, as they were about shoving off. "Men, stand by me. Release him, you murdering villain! ”

“ The freshening breeze now forced the Spider over the shoal, and she entered the creek. Giving the Midge a broadside in passing, in the hope of disabling her, so as to leave nothing to cope with but the Mosca; but the sting was not to be so easily taken out of the little vixen. Presently the Spider anchored by the stern, within pistol-shot of the schooner, right athwart his bows, and began to blaze away again. ”

“ Stepping in!—why, Benjie Brail, your seven senses are gone a-wool-gathering, like Father Rogerson's magpie—how the blazes can Nariz de Niéve, or any one else, get to you, through a two-inch door, locked on the inside?—you must get up and undo it, or you will die of starvation, for no blacksmith in Havanna could force such a complication of hardwood planks and brass knobs. ”

“ The Spider had by this time tacked, and stood out to sea again, apparently astonished at the extent of the preparations to receive her. After a brief space, she hove about, and in the very middle and thickest of a squall, accompanied by heavy thunder and vivid lightning, dashed gallantly into the harbour; but just as she came abreast of the battery, she took the ground—she had tailed on the bank, and hung. Her masts in a moment flew forward, and bent as if they would have gone over the bows, the rigging and canvass shaking and flapping convulsively ”