Part 7 (2/2)
There had come over on the vessel with us, in the cabin, a droll character, an actor in a Philadelphia theatre, who had promptly found a lodging in a kind of maritime boarding-house. Getting into some difficulty, as he could not speak French he came in a great hurry to beg me to go with him to his _pension_ to act as interpreter, which I did. I found at once that it was a Spanish house, and the resort of smugglers.
The landlady was a very pretty black-eyed woman, who played the guitar, and sang Spanish songs, and brought out Spanish wine, and was marvellously polite to me, to my astonishment, not unmingled with innocent grat.i.tude.
There I was at home. At Princeton I had learned to play the guitar, and from Manuel Gori, who had during all his boyhood been familiar with low life and smugglers, I had learned many songs and some slang. And so, with a crowd of dark, fierce, astonished faces round me of men eagerly listening, I sang a smuggler's song--
”Yo que soy contrabandista, Y campo a me rispeto, A todos mi desafio, Quien me compra hilo negro?
Ay jaleo!
Muchachas jaleo!
Quien me compra hilo negro!”
Great was the amazement and thundering the applause from my auditors. Let the reader imagine a nun of fourteen years asked to sing, and bursting out with ”Go it while you're young!” Then I sang the _Tragala_, which coincided with the political views of my friends. But my grand _coup_ was in reserve. I had learned from Borrow's ”Gypsies in Spain” a long string of Gitano or Gypsy verses, such as--
”El eray guillabela, El eray obusno; Que avella romanella, No avella obusno!”
”Loud sang the _gorgio_ to his fair, And thus his ditty ran:-- 'Oh, may the Gypsy maiden come, And not the Gypsy man!'”
And yet again--
”Coruncho Lopez, gallant lad, A smuggling he would ride; So stole his father's ambling prad, And therefore to the galleys sad Coruncho now I guide.”
This was a final _coup_. How the _diabolo_ I, such an innocent stranger youth, had ever learned Spanish _Gypsy_--the least knowledge of which in Spain implies unfathomable iniquity and fastness--was beyond all comprehension. So I departed full of honour amid thunders of applause.
From the first day our room was the resort of all the American s.h.i.+p-captains in Ma.r.s.eilles. We kept a kind of social hall or exchange, with wine and cigars on the side-table, all of which dropping in and out rather reminded me of Princeton. My friend the actor had pitched upon a young English Jew, who seemed to me to be a doubtful character. He sang very well, and was full of local news and gossip. He, too, was at home among us. One evening our captain told us how he every day smuggled ash.o.r.e fifty cigars in his hat. At hearing this, I saw a gleam in the eyes of the young man, which was a revelation to me. When he had gone, I said to the captain, ”You had better not smuggle any cigars to-morrow.
That fellow is a spy of the police.”
The next day Captain Jack on leaving his s.h.i.+p was accosted by the _douaniers_, who politely requested him to take off his hat. He refused, and was then told that he must go before the _prefet_. There the request was renewed. He complied; but ”forewarned, forearmed”--there was nothing in it.
Captain Jack complimented me on my sagacity, and scolded the actor for making such friends. But he had unconsciously made me familiar with one compared to whom the spy was a trifle. I have already fully and very truthfully described this remarkable man in an article in _Temple Bar_, but his proper place is here. He was a little modest-looking Englishman, who seemed to me rather to look up to the fast young American captains as types or models of more daring beings. Sometimes he would tell a mildly- naughty tale as if it were a wild thing. He consulted with me as to going to Paris and hearing lectures at the University, his education having been neglected. He had, I was told, experienced a sad loss, having just lost his s.h.i.+p on the Guinea coast. One day I condoled with him, saying that I heard he had been ruined.
”Yes,” replied the captain, ”I have. Something like this: My mother once had a very pretty housemaid who disappeared. Some time after I met her magnificently dressed, and I said, 'Sally, where do you live now?' She replied, 'Please, sir, I don't live anywhere now; I've been _ruined_.'”
Sam explained to me that the captain had a keg of gold-dust and many diamonds, and having wrecked his vessel intentionally, was going to London to get a heavy insurance. He had been ”ruined” to his very great advantage. Then Sam remarked--
”You don't know the captain. I tell you, Charley, that man is an old slaver or pirate. See how I'll draw him out.”
'The next day Sam began to talk. He remarked that he had been to sea and had some money which he wished to invest. His health required a warm climate, such as the African coast. We would both, in fact, like to go into the Guinea business. [_Bozales_--”sacks of charcoal,” I remarked in Spanish slaver-slang.] The captain smiled. He had apparently heard the expression before. He considered it. He had a great liking for me, and thought that a trip or two under the black flag would do me a great deal of good. So he noted down our address, and promised that as soon as he should get a s.h.i.+p we should hear from him.
After that the captain, regarding me as enlisted in the fraternity, and only waiting till 'twas ”time for us to go,” had no secrets from me. He was very glad that I knew Spanish and French, and explained that if I would learn Coromantee or Ebo, it would aid us immensely in getting cargoes. By the way, I became very well acquainted in after years with King George of Bonney, and can remember entertaining him with a story how a friend of mine once (in Cuba) bought thirty Ebos, and on entering the barrac.o.o.n the next morning, found them all hanging by the necks dead, like a row of possums in the Philadelphia market--they having, with magnificent pluck, and in glorious defiance of Buckra civilisation, resolved to go back to Africa. I have found other blacks who believed that all good darkies when they die go to Guinea, and one of these was very touching and strange. He had been brought as a slave-child to South Carolina, but was always haunted by the memory of a group of cocoa-palms by a place where the wild white surf of the ocean bounded up to the sh.o.r.e--a rock, suns.h.i.+ne, and sand. There he declared his soul would go.
He was a Voodoo, and a man of marvellous strange mind.
Day by day my commander gave me, as I honestly believe, without a shadow of exaggeration, all the terrific details of a slaver's life, and his strange experiences in buying slaves in the interior. Compared to the awful ma.s.sacres and cruelties inflicted by the blacks on one another, the white slave trade seemed to be philanthropic and humane. He had seen at the grand custom in Dahomey 2,500 men killed, and a pool made of their blood into which the king's wives threw themselves naked and wallowed.
”One day fifteen were to be tortured to death for witchcraft. I bought them all for an old dress-coat,” said the captain. ”I didn't want them, for my cargo was made up; it was only to save the poor devils' lives.”
If a slaver could not get a full cargo, and met with a weaker vessel which was full, it was at once attacked and plundered. Sometimes there would be desperate resistance, with the aid of the slaves. ”I have seen the scuppers run with blood,” said the captain. And so on, with much more of the same sort, all of which has since been recorded in the ”Journal of Captain Canot,” from which latter book I really learned nothing new. I might add the ”Life of Hobart Pacha,” whom I met many times in London. A real old-fas.h.i.+oned slaver was fully a hundred times worse than an average pirate, because he _was_ the latter whenever he wished to rob, and in his business was the cause of far more suffering and death.
The captain was very fond of reading poetry, his favourite being Wordsworth. This formed quite a tie between us. He was always rather mild, quiet, and old-fas.h.i.+oned--in fact, m.u.f.fish. Once only did I see a spark from him which showed what was latent. Captain Jack was describing a most extraordinary run which we had made before a gale from Gibraltar to Cape de Creux, which was, indeed, true enough, he having a very fast vessel. But the _Guinea_ captain denied that such time had ever been made by any craft ever built. ”And I have had to sail sometimes pretty fast in my time,” he added with one sharp glance--no more--but, as Byron says of the look of Gulleyaz, 'twas like a short glimpse of h.e.l.l. Pretty fast! I should think so--now and then from an English cruiser, all sails wetted down, with the gallows in the background. But as I had been on board with Sam, the question was settled. We _had_ made a run which was beyond all precedent.
I fancy that the captain, if he escaped the halter or the wave, in after years settled down in some English coast-village, where he read Wordsworth, and attended church regularly, and was probably regarded as a gentle old duffer by the younger members of society. But take him for all in all, he was the mildest-mannered man that ever scuttled s.h.i.+p or cut a throat, and he always behaved to me like a perfect gentleman, and never uttered an improper word.
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