As soon as you near St Helena by a few miles, the trade-wind falls light; and making the rock, as you do from the South Atlantic, a good deal to leeward of the harbour, 'twould be pretty slow work beating round to north-east, but for the breeze always coming off the height, with the help of which one can coast easy enough along. Captain Wallis said no more than to bid the first lieutenant make the brig's number at her mast-head, while she still bore in direct upon the breast of the land, as much out of soundings as the day before; the smooth heavy swell seeming to float the island up in one huge lump ahead of us, till you saw it rolling in to the very foot, with a line of surf, as if it all rose sheer out of the bottom of the sea; as grim and hard as a block of iron, too, and a good deal the same colour. By noon, it hung fairly as it were over our mast-heads, the brig looking by comparison as tiny and as ticklish as a craft made of glass; she coasting away round, with yards braced first one way then another, and opening point after point from three hundred to two thousand feet high; while at times she would go stealing in with a faint ripple at her bows, near enough to hear the deep sound of the sea plunging slowly to the face of the rock, where the surf rose white against it without a break. There wasn't so much as a weed to be seen, the rocks getting redder and more coppery, sending out the light like metal, till you'd have thought they tingled all over with the heat. Then as you opened another bulge in the line, the sharp sugar-loaf hills, far away up, with the ragged cliffs and crags, shot over against the bare white sky in all sort of shapes; and after a good long spell of the sea, there was little fancy needed to give one the notion they were changing into these, as we passed ahead, to mock you. There was one peak for all the world like the top of St Paul's, and no end of church spires and steeples, all lengths and ways; then big bells and trumpets, mixed with wild-beasts' heads, grinning at each other across some split in the blue beyond, and soldier's helmets—not to speak of one huge block, like a Nigger's face with a cowl behind it, hanging far out over the water. Save for the colour of it all, in fact, St Helena reminds one more of a tremendous iceberg than an island, and not the less that it looks ready in some parts to topple over and show a new face; while the sea working round it, surging into the hollows below water-mark, and making the air groan inside of them, keeps up a noise the like of which you wouldn't wish to cruise alongside of every day. The strangest thing about it, however, was that now and then, as you came abreast of some deep gully running up inland, a sudden blast of wind would rush out of it, sufficient to make the Podargus reel—with a savage thundering roar, too, like the howl out of a lion's mouth; while you looked far up a narrow, bare black glen, closing into a hubbub of red rocks, or losing itself up a grey hill-side in a white thread of a water-course; then the rough shell of the island shut in again, as still as before, save the light breeze and the deep hum of the surf along its foot. Curiously enough in a latitude like St Helena's, the island seems, as it were, a perfect bag of air. What with the heat of the rock, its hollow inside, the high peaks of it catching the clouds, and the narrow outlets it has, 'tis always brewing wind, you may say, to ventilate that part of the tropics—just as one may keep up cold draughts through and through a wet heap of loose stones, no matter how hot the weather is, as long as he pleases. As for a landing-place, though, there wasn't one of the gullies that didn't yawn over without falling to the sea; and not to mention the surf underneath, where Once or twice, standing further off, we caught sight of Diana's Peak over the shoulder of a hill, with the light haze melting about it; at last you noticed a large gun mounted against the sky on a lofty peak, where it looked like a huge telescope; and on clearing another headland, a beautiful frigate came in between us and the burst of light to seaward, cruising to windward under easy sail. She bore up and stood towards the brig-of-war, just as the line of wall was to be seen winding round the middle of Sugar-Loaf Point, where the sentry's bayonet glittered near his watch-box, and the soldiers' red coats could be seen moving through the covered passage to the batteries. Five minutes after, the Podargus swept round the breast of Rupert's Hill into the bay, in sight of James Town and the ships lying off the harbour; cluing up her sails and ready to drop anchor, as the frigate hove to not far astern. You can fancy land heaving in sight after thrice as many weeks as you've been at sea, ladies; or the view of a ship to a man that's been long laid up in bed ashore; or a gulp of fresh water in a sandy desert,—but I question if any of them matches your first glimpse of James Town from the roadstead, like a bright piece of fairy-work in the mouth of the narrow brown valley, after seeing desolation enough to make you wish for a clear horizon again. More especially this time, when all the while one couldn't help bringing to mind one's notion of the French Emperor, how, not long ago, the sight of the French coast, or a strange frigate over the Channel swell, used to make us think of him far ashore, with half the earth for his own, and millions of soldiers. We reefers down in the cockpit would save our grog to drink confusion to Napoleon, and in a rough night near a lee-shore, it was look alive aloft, or choose betwixt cold brine and the clutch of a gendarme hauling you to land. I do believe we looked upon him as a sort of god, as Captain Wallis did in the Temple; every ship or gun-boat we saw taken, or had a hand in the mauling of, why, 'twas for the sheer sake of the thing, and scarce by way of harm to Boney; while nothing like danger, from breakers on the lee-bow to a November gale, but had seemingly a taste of him. None of us any more thought of bringing him to this, than we did of his marching into London, or of a French frigate being able to rake our old Pandora in a set-to on green water or blue, with us to handle her. But there was the neat little cluster of houses, white, yellow, and green, spreading down close together in the bottom of the valley, and out along the sea's edge; the rough brown cliffs sloping up on each side, with the ladder-like way to the fort on the right, mounting, as it were, out of the very street, to the flag-staff on the top, and dotted with red-coats going up and down; a bright line of a pier and a wall before the whole, the Government House dazzling through a row of spreading trees, and a little square church tower to be seen beyond. 'Twas more like a scene in a play, than aught else; what with the suddenness of it all, the tiny look of it betwixt the huge rocks, the greenness of the trees and bushes, and patches of garden struggling up as far as they could go into the stone, and the gay little toys of cottages, with scarce flat enough to stand upon: save for the blue swell of the sea plunging lazily in through the bit of a bay, and the streak of air behind, that let you in high over the head of the hollow, up above one height and another, to a flat-headed blue rise in the distance, where Longwood could be seen from the main-cross-trees I had gone to as the sails were furled. The sunlight, striking from both the red sides of the ravine, made the little village of a place, trees and all, glitter in a lump together, out of it, like no spot in the rest of the world; while elsewhere there wasn't so much as a weed to be seen hanging from the rock, nor the sign of another human habitation, saving the bare batteries on each hand, with a few sheds and warehouses over the beach along the landing-place. There was apparently a busy scene ashore, however, both in the little town, which has scarce more than a single street, and along the quay, full of residents, as well as passengers from two Indiamen lying in-shore of us, while the Government esplanade seemed to be crowded with ladies, listening to the regimental band under the trees. The Newcastle frigate, with Sir Dudley Aldcombe's flag hoisted at her mizen, was at anchor out abreast at Ladder Hill; and our first lieutenant had scarce pulled aboard of the Hebe, which was hove-to off the brig's quarter, before I noticed the Admiral's barge lying alongside the Hebe. Seeing Mr Aldridge on his way back shortly after, I came down the rigging, more anxious than ever to have my own matter settled; indeed, Captain Wallis no sooner caught sight of my face, uncomfortable as I daresay it looked, than he told me he was going to wait on the Admiral aboard the Hebe, and would take me with him at once, if I chose. For my part, I needed nothing but the leave, and in ten minutes time I found myself, no small mark of curiosity, betwixt the waist and the quarterdeck of the Hebe, where the officers eyed me with as little appearance of rudeness as they could help, and I overhauled the spars and rigging aloft as coolly as I could, waiting to be sent for below. The Hebe, in fact, was the very beauty of a twenty-eight; taking the shine, and the wind, too, clean out of everything even at Plymouth, where I had seen her once a year or two before: our poor dear old Iris herself had scarce such a pattern of a hull, falling in, as it did, from the round swell of her bilge, to just under the plank-sheer, and spreading out again with her bright black top-sides, till where the figurehead shot over the cut-water, and out of her full pair of bows, like a swan's neck out of its breast. As for the Iris, our boatswain himself one day privately confessed to me, almost with tears in his eyes, that she tumbled home a thought too much just in front of the fore-chains, and he'd tried to get it softened off with dead planking and paint, but it wouldn't do; everybody saw through them. The truth was, to feel this fine ship under one, with her loose topsails hanging high against the gloom of the red gully towards Longwood, and the gay little town peeping just over her larboard bow, a mile away, it somehow or other cleared one's mind of a load. I was thinking already how, if one had the command of such a craft, to do something with her at sea—hang it! but surely that old Judge couldn't be too proud to give him a fair hearing. By Jove! thought I—had one only wild enough weather, off the Cape, say—if I wouldn't undertake to bother even a seventy-four a whole voyage through, till she struck her flag; in which case a fellow might really venture to hold his head up and speak his mind, lovely as Violet Hyde would be in Calcutta. But then, again, there was St Helena towering red and rough over the ships, with the grand French Emperor hidden in it hard and fast, and all the work he used to give us at an end! Just at the moment, happening to catch sight of the American mate's sallow black visage over the brig-of-war's hammock-cloths, peering as he did from the cliffs to the lofty spars of the frigate, while his Negro shipmates were to be made out nearer the bows—somehow or other the whole affair of their being burnt out and picked up started into my mind again, along with our late queer adventures in the Indiaman. Not to mention Captain Wallis's story, it flashed upon me all at once, for the first time, that the strange schooner Not being much accustomed to admirals' society, as a little white-haired fellow-reefer of mine once said at a tea-party ashore, I came in at the door with rather an awkward bow, no doubt; for Sir Dudley, who was sitting on the sofa with his cocked hat and sword beside him, talking to Captain Wallis, turned his head at the captain's word, as if he were trying to keep in a smile. A tall, fine-looking man he was, and few seamen equal to him for handling a large fleet, as I knew, though his manners were finished enough to have made him easy in a king's court. As for the captain of the Hebe, he was leaning out of an open stern-window, seemingly a young man, but who he might be I didn't know at the moment. The Admiral had only a question or two to put, before he looked back to Captain Wallis again, remarking it was clear he had brought away the wrong man. "I didn't think you were so dull in the Podargus," said he, smiling, "as to let an Indiaman play off such a trick on you—eh, Captain Wallis!" Captain Wallis glanced round the cabin, and then sideways down at Sir Dudley's cocked hat, in a funny enough way, as much as to say he took all the blame on himself; and it struck me more than ever what a kind heart the man had in him—if you only set aside his hatred to Buonaparte, which in fact was nothing else but a twisted sort of proof of the same thing. "Pooh, pooh, Wallis," continued Sir Dudley, "we can't do anything in the matter; though, if the service were better than it really is at present, I should certainly incline to question a smart young fellow like this, that has held His Majesty's commission, for idling in an Indiaman after the lady passengers! I am afraid, sir," said he to me, "you've lost your passage, though,—unless the captain of the Hebe will give you his second berth here, to make amends." "You need not be afraid, Lord Frederick!" added he, looking toward the captain of the frigate, and raising his voice; "you do not know him, after all, I suppose!" The captain drew in his head, saying he had been doubtful about one of the pivots of the rudder, then turned full round and looked uneasily at me, on which his face brightened immediately, and he said, "No, Sir Dudley, I do not!" I was still in ignorance for a moment or so, myself, who this titled young post-captain might be, though I had certainly seen him before; till all at once I recollected him, with a start as pleasant to me as his seemed to him at not knowing me. Both Westwood and I had been midshipmen together for a while in the Orion, fifty-gun ship, where he was second lieutenant, several years before. As for me, I was too fond of a frigate to stay longer in her than I could help; but I remembered my being a pest to the second lieutenant, and Tom's being a favourite of his, so that he staid behind me, and got master's mate as soon as he was 'passed.' The Honourable Frederick Bury he was then, and the handsomest young fellow in the squadron, as well as the best-natured aboard. I don't believe he knew how to splice in a dead-eye, and any of the masters'-mates could take charge of the ship better in a rough night, I daresay; but for a gallant affair in the way of hard knocks, with management to boot, there wasn't his match. He never was known to fail when he took a thing in hand; lost fewer men, too, than any one else did; "What is your name then, young man?" inquired Sir Dudley Aldcombe of me. The instant I told him, Lord Frederick Bury gave me another look, then a smile. "What?" said he, "Collins that was in the Orion?" "Yes, Lord Frederick," said I, "the same; I was third in the Iris off the West African coast, since then." "Why," said he, "I recollect you quite well, Mr Collins, although you have grown a foot, I think, sir—but your eye reminds me of sundry pranks you used to play on board! What nickname was it your mess-mates called you, by the bye?" "Something foolish enough, I suppose, my lord," replied I, biting my lip; "but I remember clearly having the honour to steer the second cutter in shore one dark night near Dunkirk, when your lordship carried the Dutch brig and the two French chasse-marÉes—" "'Faith," broke in the captain of the Hebe, "you've a better memory than I have—I do not recollect any chasse-marÉes at all, that time, Mr Collins!" "Why," said I, "I got a knock on the head from a fellow in a red shirt—that always kept me in mind." "Oh," remarked the Admiral to Captain Wallis, laughing, "Lord Frederick Bury must have had so many little parties of the kind, that his memory can't be expected to be very nice! However, I shall go ashore at present, gentlemen, leaving the Hebe and you to dispose of this runaway lieutenant in someway or other. Only you'd better settle it before Admiral Plampin arrives!" "Have you seen the—the—Longwood lately, Sir Dudley?" asked the captain of the Podargus, carelessly. "Yes, not many days ago I had an interview," said the Admiral gravely; "proud as ever, and evidently resolved not to flinch from his condition. 'Tis wonderful the command that man has over himself, Wallis—he speaks of the whole world and its affairs like one that sees into them, and had them still nearly under his foot! All saving those miserable squabbles with Plantation House, which—but, next time, I shall take my leave, and wash my hands of the whole concern, I am glad to think!" Lord Frederick was talking to me meanwhile at the other end of the cabin, but I was listening in spite of myself to Sir Dudley Aldcombe, and noticed that Captain Wallis made no answer. "By the way, Wallis," continued the Admiral, "'tis curious that he seemed anxious more than once to know what you think of him—I believe he would like to see you!" "To see me!" said the commander of the Podargus, suddenly. "At last, does he! No, Sir Dudley, he and I never will meet; he ought to have thought of it twelve years sooner! God knows," he went on, "the commander of a ten-gun brig is too small a man to see the Emperor Napoleon a prisoner—but in ten years of war, Sir Dudley, what mightn't one have been, instead of being remembered after as only plain John Wallis, whom Buonaparte kept all that time in prison, and who was sent, in course of time, to cruise off St Helena!" Here the Admiral said something about a British sailor not keeping malice, and Captain Wallis looked up at him gravely. "No," replied he; "no, Sir Dudley, I shouldn't have chosen the thing; but in the mean time I'm only doing my duty. There's a gloomy turn in my mind by this time, no doubt; but you've no idea, Sir Dudley, how the thought of other people comes into one's head when he's years shut up—so "This is a disagreeable affair of your old messmate's, Mr Collins," said he, seriously. "You are, perhaps, not aware that Captain Duncombe was a relative of my own, and the fact of his property having fallen by will to myself, rendered my position the more peculiarly disagreeable, had I been obliged not only to recognise Lieutenant Westwood here, but afterwards to urge proceedings against him, even if he were let off by court-martial. I cannot tell you how the sight of a stranger, as I thought, relieved me, sir!" "Indeed, Lord Frederick!" replied I, too much confused in the circumstances to say more. However, his lordship's manner soon set me at my ease, the old good-humoured smile coming over his fine features again, while he went on to offer me the place of his second lieutenant, who was going home very ill by one of the homeward bound Indiamen; adding, that Sir Dudley would confirm the appointment; indeed, he could scarce help himself, he said, as there was nobody else he could get at present. "You must be a thorough good sailor by this time, Collins," continued he, "if you have gone on at the rate you used to do. I remember how fond you were of having charge for a minute or two of the old Orion, or when I let you put her about in my watch. Why they called you 'young Green,' I never could understand, unless it was 'ut lucus a non lucendo' as we used to say at Eton, you know. Well, what do you say?" Now, as you may suppose, the idea of boxing about St Helena, for heaven knew how long, didn't at all suit my liking—with the thought of the Seringapatam steering away for Bombay the whole time, and a hundred notions of Violet Hyde in India,—'twould have driven me madder than the Temple did Captain Wallis: but it was only the first part of my mind I gave Lord Frederick. "What!" exclaimed he, with a flush over his face, and drawing up his tall figure, "you didn't suppose I should remain here? Why, the Hebe is on her way for Calcutta and Canton, and will sail as soon as the Conqueror arrives at James Town with Admiral Plampin." "Your lordship is very kind," said I looking down to cover my delight; "and if I am not worthy of the post, it shan't be my fault, Lord Frederick." "Ah, very good!" said he smiling; "'tis an opportunity you oughtn't to let slip, Collins, let me tell you! For my own part, I should just as soon cut out a pirate in the Straits of Malacca as a French brig in the Channel; and there are plenty of them, I hear, there. As for a chase, sir, I flatter myself you won't easily see a finer thing than the Hebe spreading her cloth after one of those fast proas will be—I think you are just the fellow to make her walk, too, Mr Collins—pah! to compare a day on the Derby turf with that, would be a sin! You have no idea, sir, how one longs for a fair horizon again, and brisk breezes, when so ineffably tired out of all those ball-rooms, and such things as you see about town just now—only I fear I shall wish to be second lieutenant again, eh?" The noble captain of the Hebe turned to look out through the stern window to seaward, his face losing the weary sort of half-melancholy cast it had shown for the last minute, while his eye Every block, crag, and knot in the huge crust of the rock, shone terribly bright for a minute or two, aloft from over the yard-ends, as she stood suddenly out into the fiery gleam of the sun going down many a mile away in the Atlantic. Then up leapt the light keener and keener to the very topmost peak, till you'd have thought it went in like a living thing behind a telegraph, that stood out against a black cleft betwixt two cliffs. We saw the evening gun off Ladder Hill flash upon the deep blue of the sky, seemingly throwing up the peak and flag-staff a dozen feet higher; and the boom of the gun sounding in among the wild hills and hollows within the island, as if one heard it going up to Longwood door. Scarce was it lost, ere a star or two were to be seen in the shadow on the other side, and you listened almost, in the hush following upon the gunfire, for an echo to it, or something stranger; in place of which the Hebe was already forging ahead in the dark to get well clear of the land, every wave bringing its own blackness with it up toward her forechains, then sparkling back to her waist in the seeth of foam as she felt the breeze; while St Helena lay towering along to larboard, with its ragged top blotting against the deep dark-blue of the sky, all filling as it was with the stars. I had the middle watch that night; the ship being under short canvass, and slowly edging down to make the most leewardly point of the island, from which she was to beat up again at her leisure by the morning. All we had to do was to keep a good look-out, on the one hand, into the streak of starlight to seaward, and on the other along the foot of the rocks, as well as holding her well in hand, in case of some sudden squall through the valleys from inside. However, I shan't easily forget the thoughts that ran in my mind, walking the quarterdeck, with the frigate under charge, the first time I noticed Orion and the Serpent begin to wheel glittering away from over Diana's Peak—the others stealing quietly into sight after them, past the leech of our main-topsail: scarce an English star to be seen for the height of the island off our quarter; some of the men on one side of the booms humming a song about Napoleon's dream, which you'll hear to this day in ships' forecastles; another yarning solemnly, on the other side, about some old sweetheart of his—but all of them ready to jump at my own least word. In the morning, however, there we were, stretching back by degrees to go round the lee side of the island again; the haze melting off Diana's Peak as before, and the sea rolling in swells as blue as indigo, to the huge red lumps of bare crag; while the bright surges leapt out of them all along the frigate's side, and the spray rose at times to her figure-head. During the day we cruised farther out, and the Hebe had enough to do in seeing off one Indiaman for home, and speaking another outward-bound craft, that passed forty miles off or so, without touching; the governor's telegraphs were eternally at work on the heights, bothering her for the least trifle, and making out a sail sixty "How!" asked Lord Frederick, "a discovery, did you say, Sir Dudley?" "Oh, nothing of the kind we should care about, after all," said the Admiral; "from what I could gather, 'twas only scientific, though the American called it 'a pretty importaint fact.' This Mr Mathewson Brown, I believe, was sent out by the States' Government as botanist in an expedition to southward, and has leave from Sir Hudson to use his opportunity before the next Indiaman sails, for examining part of the island; and to-day he thought he found the same plants in St Helena as he did in Gough's Island and Tristan d'Acunha, twelve hundred miles off, near the Cape; showing, as he said, how once on a time there must have been land between them, perhaps as far as Ascension!" "Why," put in Lord Frederick, "that would have made a pretty good empire, even for Napoleon!" "So it would, my lord," said Sir Dudley, "much better than Elba,—but the strangest part of it is, this Mr Brown was just telling his Excellency, as I entered the room, that some of the ancient philosophers wrote about this said country existing in the Atlantic before the Flood—how rich it was, with the kings it had, and the wars carried on there; till on account of their doings, no doubt, what with an earthquake, a volcano, and the ocean together, they all sunk to the bottom except the tops of the mountains! Now I must say," continued the Admiral, "all this learning seemed to one to come rather too much by rote out of this gentleman's mouth, and the American style of his talk made it somewhat ludicrous, though he evidently believed in what may be all very true—particularly, in mentioning the treasures that must lie under water for leagues round, or even in nooks about the St Helena rocks, I thought his very teeth watered. As for Sir Hudson, he had caught at the idea altogether, but rather in view of a historical work on the island, from the earliest times till now—and I believe he means to accompany the two botanists himself over toward Longwood to-morrow, where we may very likely get sight of them." "O—h?" thought I, and Lord Frederick Bury smiled. "Rather a novelty, indeed!" said he; and the first lieutenant looked significantly enough to me, as we leant over the battery wall, watching the hot horizon through the spars of the ships before James Town. "What amused me," Sir Dudley said again, "was the American botanist's utter indifference, when I asked if he had seen anything of 'the General' in the distance. The Governor started, glancing sharp at Mr Brown, and I noticed his dark companion give a sudden side-look from the midst of his talk with her ladyship, whereupon the botanist merely pointed with his thumb to the floor, asking coolly 'what it was to science?' At this," added Sir Dudley to the captain, "his Excellency seemed much relieved; and after having got leave for myself and your lordship to-morrow, I left them still in the spirit of it. It certainly struck me that, in the United States themselves, educated men in general couldn't have such a vulgar manner about them,—in fact I thought the Mexican attendant more the gentleman of the two—his face was turned half from me most of the time, but still it struck me as remarkably intelligent." "Ah," said Lord Frederick carelessly, "all the Spaniards have naturally a noble sort of air, you know, Sir Dudley—they'll never make republicans!" "And I must say," added the Admiral, as they strolled out of the shade, up the battery steps, "little as I know of Latin, what this Mr Brown used did seem to me fearfully bad!" "And no wonder!" thought I "from a Yankee schoolmaster," as I had found my late shipmate was, before he thought of travelling; but the valuable Daniel turning his hand to help out some communication or other, no doubt, with Napoleon Buonaparte in St Helena, took me at first as so queer an affair, that I didn't know whether to laugh at him or admire his Yankee coolness, when he ran such risks. As for the feasibleness of actually getting the prisoner clear out of the island, our cruising on guard was enough to show me it would be little short of a miracle; yet I couldn't help thinking they meant to try it; and in case of a dark night, which the southeaster was very likely to bring, if it shifted or freshened a little,—why, I knew you needn't call anything impossible that a cool head and a bold heart had to do with, provided only they could get their plans laid inside and out so as to tally. The more eager I got for next day, when it would be easy enough for any of us to go up inland after Lord Frederick, as far as Hut's Gate, at least. Meantime the first lieutenant and I walked up together to where the little town broke into a sort of suburb of fancy cottages, with verandahs and green venetians in bungalow style, scattered to both sides of the rock amongst little grass plots and garden patches; every foot of ground made use of. And a perfect gush of flowers and leaves it was, clustering over the tiles of the low roofs; while you saw through a thicket of poplars and plantains, right into the back of the gulley, with a ridge of black rock closing it fair up; and Side Path, as they call the road to windward, winding overhead along the crag behind the houses, out of sight round a mass of cliffs. Every here and there, a runlet of water came trickling down from above the trees to water their roots; you saw the mice in hundreds, scampering in and out of holes in the dry stone, with now and then a big ugly rat that turned round to face you, being no doubt fine game to the St Helena people, ill off as they all seemed for something to do—except the Chinese with their huge hats, hoeing away under almost every tree one saw, and the Yamstock fishermen to be seen bobbing for mullet outside the ships, in a blaze of light sufficient to bake any heads but their own. Every cottage had seven or eight parrots in it, apparently; a cockatoo on a stand by the door, or a monkey up in a box—not to speak of canaries in the window, and white goats feeding about with bells round their necks: so you may suppose what a jabbering, screaming, whistling, and tinkling there was up the whole hollow, added to no end of children and young ladies making the most of the shade as it got near nightfall—and all that were out of doors came flocking down Side-Path. Both of us having leave ashore that night, for a ball in one of these same little bungalows near the head of the valley, 'twas no use to think of a bed, and as little to expect getting off to the ship, which none could do after gunfire. For that matter, I daresay there might be twenty such parties, full of young reefers and homeward-bound old East Indians, keeping it up as long as might be, because they had nowhere to sleep. The young lady of the house we were in was one of the St Helena beauties, called "the Rosebud," from her colour. A lovely creature she was, certainly, as it was plain our Hebe's first lieutenant thought, with several more to boot: every sight of her figure gliding about through the rest, the white muslin floating round her like haze, different as her face was, made one think of the Seringapatam's deck at sea, with the men walking the forecastle in the middle watch, and the poop quiet over the Judge's cabins. Two or three times I had fancied for a moment that, if one had somewhat stirring to busy himself with, why, he might so far forget what was no doubt likely to interfere pretty much with a profession like my own; and so it might have been, perhaps, had I only seen her ashore: whereas now, whether it was ashore or afloat, by Jove! everything called her somehow to mind. The truth is, I defy you to get rid very easily of the thought about one you've sailed in the same ship with, be it girl or woman—the same bottom betwixt you and the water, the same breeze blowing your pilot-coat in the watch on deck, that Mr Newland the first lieutenant, and I, set out early in the day, accordingly, with a couple of the Hebe's midshipmen, mounted on as many of the little island ponies, to go up inland for a cruise about the hills. Accordingly, we had parted company, and I was holding single-handed round one side of the Devil's Punch-Bowl, when I heard a clatter of horse-hoofs on the road, and saw the Admiral and Lord Frederick riding quickly past on the opposite side, on their way to Longwood—which, curiously enough, was half-covered with mist at the time, driving down from the higher hills, apparently before a regular gale, or rather some kind of a whirlwind. In fact, I learned after that such was often the case, the climate up there being quite different from below, where they never feel a At this, of course, I gave it up, with a blessing to all lobster-backs, and made sail down to leeward again as far as the next rise, from which there was a full view of the sea at any rate, though the face of a rough crag over behind me shut out Longwood House altogether. Here I had to get fairly off the saddle—rather sore, I must say, with riding up St Helena roads after so many weeks at sea—and flung myself down on the grass, with little enough fear of the hungry little beast getting far adrift. This said crag, by the way, drew my eye to it by the queer colours it showed, white, blue, gray, and bright red in the hot sunlight; and being too far off to make out clearly, I slung off the ship's glass I had across my back, just to overhaul it better. The hue of it was to be seen running all down the deep rift between, that seemingly wound away into some glen toward the coast; while the lot of plants and trailers half-covering the steep front of it, would no doubt, I thought, have delighted my old friend the Yankee, if he was the botanising gentleman in question. By this time it was a lovely afternoon far and wide to Diana's Peak, the sky glowing clearer deep-blue at that height than you'd have thought sky could do, even in the tropics—the very peaks of bare red rock being softened into a purple tint, far off round you. One saw into the If I lived a thousand years, I couldn't tell half what I felt lying there; but, as you may imagine, it had somewhat in it of the late European war by land and sea. Not that I could have said so at the time, but rather a sort of half-doze, such as I've known one have when a schoolboy, lying on the green grass the same way, with one's face turned up into the hot summer heavens: half of it flying glimpses, as it were, of the French Revolution, the battles we used to hear of when we were children—then the fears about the invasion, with the Channel full of British fleets, and Dover Cliffs—Trafalgar and Nelson's death, and the battle of Waterloo, just after we heard he had got out of Elba. In the terrible flash of the thing all together, one almost fancied them all gone like smoke; and for a moment I thought I was falling away off, down into the wide sky, so up I started to sit. From that, suddenly I took to guessing and puzzling closely again how I should go to work myself, if I were the strange Frenchman I saw in the brig at sea, and wanted to manage Napoleon's escape out of St Helena. And first, there was how to get into the island and put him up to the scheme—why, sure enough, I couldn't have laid it down better than they seemed to have done all along: what could one do but just dodge about that latitude under all sorts of false rig, then catch hold of somebody fit to cover one's landing. No Englishman would do it, and no foreigner but would set Sir Hudson Lowe on his guard in a moment. Next we should have to get put on the island,—and really a neat enough plan it was to dog one of the very cruisers themselves, knock up a mess of planks and spars in the night-time, set them all a-blaze with tar, and pretend we were fresh from a craft on fire; when even Captain Wallis of the Podargus, as it happened, was too much of a British seaman not to carry us straight to St Helena! Again, I must say it was a touch beyond me—but to hit the Governor's notions of a hobby, and go picking up plants round Longwood, was a likely enough way to get speech of the prisoner, or at least let him see one was there! How should I set about carrying him off to the coast, though? That was the prime matter. Seeing that even if the schooner—which was no doubt hovering out of sight—were to make a bold dash for the land with the trade-wind, in a night eleven hours long—there were sentries close round Longwood from sunset, the starlight shining mostly always in the want of a moon; and at any rate there was rock and gully enough, betwixt here and the coast, to try the surest foot aboard the Hebe, let alone an emperor. With plenty of woods for a cover, one might steal up close to Longwood, but the bare rocks showed you off to be made a mark of. Whew! but why were those same Blacks on the island, I thought: just strip them stark-naked, and let them lie in the Devil's Punch-bowl, or somewhere, beyond military hours, when I warrant me they might slip up, gully by gully, to the very sentries' backs! Their colour wouldn't show them, and savages as they seemed, couldn't they settle as many sentries as they needed, creep into the very bedchamber where Buonaparte slept, and manhandle him bodily away down through some of the nearest hollows, before any one was the wiser? The point that still bothered me was, why the fourth of the Blacks was wanting at present, unless he had his part to play elsewhere. If it was chance, then the whole might be a notion of mine, which I knew I was apt to have sometimes. If I could only The truth was, I was on the point of tripping my anchor to hurry down and get aboard again, but, on standing up, the head of a peak fell below the sail I had noticed in the distance, and, seeing she loomed large on the stretch of water, I pretty soon found she must be a ship of the line. The telegraph over the Alarm House was hard at work again, so I e'en took down my glass and cleaned it to have a better sight, during which I caught sight, for a minute, of some soldier officer or other on horseback, with a mounted red-coat behind him, riding hastily up the gully a good bit from my back, till they were round the red piece of crag, turning at times as if to watch the vessel. Though I couldn't have a better spy at him for want of my glass, I had no doubt he was the Governor himself, for the sentries in the distance took no note of him. There was nobody else visible at the time, and the said cliff stood fair up like a look-out place, so as to shut them out as they went higher. Once or twice after, I fancied I made out a man's head or two lower down the gully than the cliff was; which, it occurred to me, might possibly be the botanists, as they called themselves, busy finding out how long St Helena had been an island: however, I soon turned the glass before me upon the ship, by this time right opposite the ragged opening of Prosperous Bay, and heading well up about fourteen miles or so off the coast, as I reckoned, to make James Town harbour. The moment I had the sight of the glass right for her—though you'd have thought she stood still on the smooth soft blue water—I could see her whole beam rise off the swells before me, from the dark side and white band, checkered with a double row of ports, to the hamper of her lofty spars, and the sails braced slant to the breeze; the foam gleaming under her high bows, and her wake running aft in the heave of the sea. She was evidently a seventy-four: I fanced I could make out her men's faces peering over the yards toward the island, as they thought of "Boneypart;" a white rear-admiral's flag was at the mizen-royal-masthead, leaving no doubt she was the Conqueror at last, with Admiral Plampin, and, in a day or two at farthest, the Hebe would be bound for India. I had just looked over my shoulder toward Longwood, letting the Conqueror sink back again into a thing no bigger than a model on a mantelpiece, when, all at once, I saw some one standing near the brow of the cliff I mentioned, apparently watching the vessel, with a long glass at his eye, like myself. 'Twas farther than I could see to make out anything, save so During that minute the rest of them were out of sight, so far as the glass went—you'd have supposed there was no one there but himself, as still as a figure in iron; watching the same thing, no doubt, as I'd done myself five minutes before, where the noble seventy-four was beating slowly to windward. When I did glance to the knot of officers twenty yards back, 'twas as if one saw a ring of his generals waiting respectfully while he eyed some field of battle or other, with his army at the back of the hill; but next moment the telescope fell in his hands, and his face, as pale as death, with his lip firm under it, seemed near enough for me to touch it—his eyes shot stern into me from below his wide white forehead, and I started, dropping my glass in turn. That instant the whole wild lump of St Helena, with its ragged brim, the clear blue sky and the sea, swung round about the dwindled figures above the crag, till they were nothing but so many people together against the slope beyond. 'Twas a strange scene to witness, let me tell you; never can I forget the sightless, thinking sort of gaze from that head of his, after the telescope sank from his eye, when the Conqueror must have shot back with all her stately hamper into the floor of the Atlantic again! Once more I brought my spyglass to bear on the place where he had been, and was almost on the point of calling out to warn him off the edge of the cliff, forgetting the distance I was away. Napoleon had stepped, with one foot before him, on the very brink, his two hands hanging loose by his side, with the glass in one of them, till the shadow of his small black cocked hat covered the hollows of his eyes, and he stood as it were looking down past the face of the precipice. What he thought of no mortal tongue can say, whether he was master at the time over a wilder battle than any he'd ever fought—but just then, what was the surprise it gave me to see the head of a man, with a red tasselled cap on it, raised through amongst the ivy from below, while he seemed to have his feet on the cracks and juts of the rock, hoisting himself by one hand round the tangled roots, till no doubt he must have looked right aloft into the French Emperor's face; and perhaps he whispered something,—though, for my part, it was all dumb-show to me, where I knelt peering into the glass. I saw even him start at the suddenness of the thing—he raised his head upright, still glancing down over the front of the crag, with the spread hand lifted, and the side of his face half turned toward the party within earshot behind, where the Governor and the rest apparently kept together out of respect, no doubt watching both Napoleon's back and the ship of war far beyond. The keen sunlight on the spot brought out every motion of the two in front—the one so full in my view, that I could mark his look settle I was just getting near the turn into Side Path, accordingly, after a couple of mortal hours' hard riding, and once more in sight of the harbour beneath, when the three of them overtook me, having managed to reach the top of Diana's Peak, as they meant. The first lieutenant was full of the grand views on the way, with the prospect off the peak, where one saw the sea all round St Helena like a ring, and the sky over you as blue as blue water. "But what do you think we saw on the top, Mr Collins?" asked one of the urchins at me—a mischievous imp he was himself, too, pockmarked, with hair like a brush, and squinted like a ship's two hawse-holes. "Why, Mister Snelling," said I, gruffly—for I knew him pretty well already, and he was rather a favourite with me for his sharpness, though you may suppose I was thinking of no trifles at the moment—"why, the devil perhaps!" "I must say I thought at first it was him, sir," said the reefer, grinning; "'twas a black Nigger, though, sir, sitting right on the very truck of it with his hands on his two knees, and we'd got to shove him off before we could dig our knives into it!" "By the Lord Harry!" I rapped out, "the very thing that—" "'Twas really the case, though, Mr Collins," said the first lieutenant; "and I thought it curious, but there are so many Negroes in the island." "If you please, sir," put in the least of the mids, "perhaps they haven't all of 'em room to meditate, sir!" "Or sent to the masthead, eh, Roscoe?" said Snelling. "Which you'll be, sirrah," broke in the first lieutenant, "the moment I get aboard, if you don't keep a small helm!" We were clattering down over James Town by this time, the sun blazing red off the horizon, into it and the doors of the houses, and the huge hull and spars of the Conqueror almost blocking The Newcastle's boat was on the leeward coast that night, and one of our cutters was getting ready to lower, nearly off Prosperous Bay, to windward; while the frigate herself would hold farther out to sea. One of the master's mates should have taken the cutter; but after giving the first lieutenant a few hints as far as I liked to go, I proposed to go in charge of her that time, myself—which being laid to the score of my freshness on the station, and the mate being happy to get rid of a tiresome duty, I got leave at once. The sharp midshipman, Snelling, took it into his ugly head to keep me company, and away we pulled into hearing of the surf. The moment things took the shape of fair work, in fact, I lost all thoughts of the late kind. In place of seeing the ragged heights against the sky, and musing all sorts of notions about the French Emperor, there was nothing but the broad bulk of the island high over us, the swell below, and the sea glimmering wide from our gunwale to the stars; so no sooner did we lose sight of the Hebe slowly melting into the gloom, than I lit a cheroot, gave the tiller to the mid, and sat stirring to the heart at the thought of something to come, I scarce knew what. As for Buonaparte, with all that belonged to him, 'twas little to me in that mood, in spite of what I'd seen during the day, compared with a snatch of old Channel times: the truth was, next morning I'd feel for him again. The night for a good while was pretty tolerable starlight, and in a sort of a way you could make out a good distance. One time we pulled right round betwixt the two points, though slowly enough; then again the men lay on their oars, letting her float in with the long swells, till the surf could be heard too loud for a safe berth. Farther on in the night, however, it got to be dark—below, at least—the breeze holding steady, and bringing it thicker and thicker; at last it was so black all round that on one side you just knew the rocks over you, with the help of a faint twinkle of stars right aloft. On the other side there was only, at times, the two lights swinging at the mast-head of the Podargus and Hebe, far apart, and one farther to sea than the other; or now and then their stern-window and a port, when the heave of the water lifted them, or the ships yawed a little. One hour after another, it was wearisome enough waiting for nothing at all, especially in the key one was in at the time, and with a long tropical night before you. All of a sudden, fairly between the brig and the frigate, I fancied I caught a glimpse for one moment of another twinkle; then it was out again, and I had given it up, when I was certain I saw it plainly once more, as well as a third time, for as short a space as before. We were off a cove in the coast, inside Prosperous Bay, where a bight in the rocks softened the force of the surf, not far from the steep break where one of these same narrow gullies came out—a good deal short of the shore, indeed, but I knew by this time it led up somewhere toward the Longwood side. Accordingly the idea struck me of a plan to set agoing, whether I hit upon the right place or not; if it was the schooner, she would be coming down right from windward, on the look-out for a signal, as well as for the spot to aim at: the thing was to lure her boat ashore there before their time, seize her crew and take the schooner herself by surprise, as if we were coming back all right; since signal the ships we couldn't, and the schooner would be wary as a dolphin. No sooner said than done. I steered cautiously for the cove, fearfully though the swell bore in, breaking over the rocks outside of it; and the reefer and I had to spring one after the other for our lives, just as the bowman prized her off into the back-wash. As for the cutter, it would spoil all to keep her off thereabouts; and I knew if a boat did come in of the kind I guessed, why she wouldn't lay herself out for strength of crew. Snelling and I were well armed enough to manage half a I came up above water again by the sheer force of the swell, as it seemed to me, plunging into the shore; with the choice, I thought, of either being drowned in the dark, or knocked to a jelly on the rocks; but out I struck, naturally enough, rising on the huge scud of the sea, and trying to breast it, though I felt it sweep me backwards at every stroke, and just saw the wide glimmer of it heave far and wide for a moment against the gloom of the cliffs behind. All at once, in the trough, I heard the panting of some one's breath near alongside of me, and directly after, I was caught hold of by the hair of the head, somebody else grabbing at the same time for my shoulder. We weren't half-a-dozen fathoms from the stranger's boat, the Blacks who had fallen foul of me swimming manfully together, and the boat lifting bow-on to the run of the sea, as her crew looked about for us by the light of their lantern. I had just got my senses enough about me to notice so much, when they were hauling me aboard; all four of the Negroes holding on with one hand by the boat's gunnel, and helping their way with the other; while the oars began to make for the light, which was still to be caught by fits, right betwixt those of the two cruisers, as the space widened slowly in the midst of them, standing out to sea. Scarce had I time to feel some one beside me as wet as myself, whether the reefer or the Frenchman I didn't know, when crash came another boat with her bows fairly down upon our gunwale, out of the dark. The spray splashed up betwixt us, I saw the glitter of the oar-blades, and heard Snelling's shrill voice singing out to "sink the villans, my lads—down with 'em—remember the second lieutenant!" The lantern in the French boat flared, floating out for a single instant amongst a wreck of staves and heads, bobbing wildly together on the side of a wave. One of my own men from the cutter pulled me by the cuff of the neck off the crest of it with his boat-hook, as it rose swelling away past, till I had fast grip of her quarter; the Blacks could be seen struggling in the hollow, to keep up their master's body, with his hands spread helplessly hither and thither above water. The poor devils' wet black faces turned so wistfully, in their desperation, toward the cutter, that I gasped out to save him. They kept making towards us, in fact, and the bowman managed to hook him at last, though not a moment too soon, for the next heave broke the unlucky wretches apart, and we lost sight of them; the cutter hanging on her oars till they had both him and me stowed into the stern-sheets, where the Frenchman lay seemingly dead or senseless, and I spitting out the salt water like a Cockney after a bathe. "Why, Mister Snelling," said I, as soon as I came fully to myself, "I can't at all understand how I got into the water!" "Nor I either, sir," said he; "I'll be hanged, sir, if I didn't think it was a whirlwind of Niggers off the top of Diana's Peak, seeing I made out the very one we found there this afternoon—the four of them took you and this other gentleman up in their arms in a lump, as you were floundering about together, and took to the water like so many seals, sir!" I looked down into the Frenchman's face, where he lay stretched with his head back and his hair dripping. "Is he gone?" said I. "Well, sir," said the mid, who had contrived to light the lantern again, "I'm afraid he's pretty near it. Is he a friend of yours, sir?—I thought as much, by the way you caught him the moment you clapped eyes on each other, sir." "Silence, sirrah!" said I: "d'ye see anything of the light to seaward?" For a minute or two we peered over the swells into the dark, to catch the twinkle of the signal again, but to no purpose; and I began to think the bird was flown. All of a sudden, however, there it was once more, dipping as before beyond the heave of the sea, and between the backs of it, sliding across the open space, with the blind side to the cruisers. "Hallo, my lads!" said I, quickly, and giving myself another shake as I seized the tiller, "give way seaward—stretch your backs for ten minutes, and we have her!" We were pulling right for the spot, when the light vanished, but a show of our lantern brought it gleaming fairly out again, till I could even catch glimpse by it of some craft or other's hull, and the iron of one boom-end, rising over the swells. "Bow-oar, there!" whispered I; "stand by, my lad, and look sharp!" "Hola!" came a short sharp hail over the swells; "d'oÙ venez-vous?" "Oui, oui!" I sung out boldly, through my hand, to cover the difference as much as possible; then a thought occurred to me, recollecting the French surgeon's words on board this very craft the first time we saw her—"De la cage de l'Aigle"—I hailed—"bonne fortune, mes amis!" "C'est possible! c'est possible, mon capitaine!" shouted several of the schooner's crew, jumping upon her bulwarks, "que vous apportez lui-mÊme?" We were pulling for her side as lubberly as possible, all the time—a man ran up on her quarter with a coil of line ready to heave—but still the main boom of the schooner was already jibing, her helm up, and she under way; they seemed half doubtful of us, and another moment might turn the scales. "Vite, vite!" roared I, choosing my French at hap-hazard. "Oui, oui, jettez votre corde—venez au lof, mes amis!"—luff, that was to say. I heard somebody aboard say it was the American—the schooner came up in the wind, the line whizzing off her quarter into our bows, and we came sheering down close by her lee quarter, grinding against her bends in the surge, twenty eager faces peering over at us in the confusion; when I sung out hoarsely to run for brandy and hot blankets, as he was half-drowned. "Promptement—promptement, mes amis!" shouted I, and as quickly there was a rush from her bulwarks to bring what was wanted, while Snelling and I made dash up her side followed by the men, cutlass in hand. Three minutes of hubbub, and as many strokes betwixt us, when we had driven the few that stood in our way pell-mell down the nearest hatchway. The schooner was completely our own. We hoisted up the cutter, with the French captain still stretched in the stern-sheets—hauled aft the schooner's head-sheets, let her large mainsail swing full again, and were soon standing swiftly out toward the light at the frigate's masthead. When the Hebe first caught sight of us, or rather heard the sound of the schooner's sharp bows rushing through the water, she naturally enough didn't know what to make of us. I noticed our first luff's sudden order to clear away the foremost weather-gun, with the rush of the men for it; but my hail set all to rights. We hove-to off her weather quarter, and I was directly after on board, explaining as simply as possible how we had come to get hold of a French craft thereabouts in such a strange fashion. Accordingly, you may fancy the As the Hebe was to sail at once for India, the governor took the opportunity to send two or three supernumeraries out in the vessel along with us to the Cape of Good Hope, amongst whom was the Yankee botanist; and though, being in the frigate, I didn't see him, I made as sure as if I had it was my old shipmate Daniel. Well, the morning came, when we weighed anchor from St James's Bay for sea, in company with the prize: it wasn't more than ten or eleven days since we had arrived in the Podargus, but I was as weary with the sight of St Helena as if I'd lived there a year. The frigate's lovely hull, and her taunt spars, spreading the square stretch of her white canvass sideways to the Trade, put new life into me: slowly as we dropped the peaks of the island on our lee-quarter, 'twas something to feel yourself travelling the same road as the Indiaman once more, with the odds of a mail coach, too, to a French diligence. What chance might turn up to bring us together, I certainly didn't see; but that night, when we and the schooner were the only things in the horizon, both fast plunging, close-hauled, on a fresh breeze, at the distance of a mile, I set my mind, for the first time, more at ease. "Luck and the anchors stowed!" thought I, "and hang all forethoughts!" I walked the weather quarterdeck in my watch as pleasantly as might be, with now and then a glance forward at Snelling, as he yarned at the fife-rail beside a groggy old mate, and at times a glimmer of the schooner's hull on our lee-beam, rising wet out of the dusk, under charge of our third lieutenant. It was about a week afterwards, and we began to have rough touches of Cape weather, pitching away on cross seas, and handing our 'gallant-sails oftener of a night, that Lord Frederick said to me one evening, before going down to his cabin, "Mr Collins, I really hope we shall not find your Indiaman at Cape Town, after all!" "Indeed, Lord Frederick!" said I, respectfully enough; but it was the very thing I hoped myself. "Yes, sir," continued he; "as I received strict injunctions by Admiral Plampin to arrest Lieutenant Westwood if we fell in with her there, and otherwise, to send the schooner in her track, even if it were to Bombay." "The deuce!" I thought, "are we never to be done with this infernal affair?" "'Tis excessively disagreeable," continued the Captain, swinging his gold eye-glass round his finger by the chain, as was his custom when bothered, and looking with one eye all the while at the schooner. "A beautiful craft, by the way, Mr Collins!" said he, "even within sight of the Hebe." "She is so, my lord," said I; "if she had only had a sensible boatswain, even, to put the sticks aloft in her." "I say, Mr Collins," went on his lordship, musingly, "I think I have it, though—the way to get rid of this scrape!" I waited and waited, however, for Lord Frederick to mention this; and to no purpose, apparently, as he went below without saying a word more about it. |