Every Man Will Do His Duty (28 page)

The Bermudas consist of upwards of a hundred little islands, clustered round two or three large ones. The seat of government then lay in St. George’s Island, which measures about four or five miles long by two broad, and is very low. The neat little town, which runs across the valley half a mile each way, is built on the south-east side, on a gentle and very pretty declivity which fronts the harbour. None of the houses are more than two stories; they are built of the soft freestone of which all these islands are composed, and most of them own but one chimney. In walking through the streets in hot days, such is the extreme whiteness of the walls that the glare is very painful to the eyes; but as most of these dwellings are surrounded by bananas, calabashes, orange-trees, and various members of the palm tribe, the disagreeable effect of the light is not felt, except in the open streets. It was then mostly inhabited by blacks, a great many of whom were householders, who had gained their freedom by purchase or some other means, most of whom held under them slaves as black as themselves, who were never allowed to have fire-arms in their hands for fear of revolt.

Hardly any birds are to be seen, except the common blue and red birds of the island, the plumage of which is very brilliant. They are about the size of a fieldfare; but neither the one nor the other sings a note. In the
midshipmen’s berth, accordingly, we had no scruple of conscience about baking them by scores in our pies, and demolishing them, in the absence of more substantial fare.

Besides St. George’s, there are numerous lesser islands, and a large district, called the Continent, from its being by far the most spacious in the cluster; no less, I believe, than twelve or fifteen miles from end to end! At the north-western end of the group lies Ireland Island, on which an extensive naval establishment had been erected; close to that spot was the anchorage for ships of war.

There is nothing more remarkable in this singular cluster of islands than the extensive coral reefs which fend off the sea on the northern side, and stretch out in a semicircular belt, at the distance of two or three leagues from the land. If I recollect rightly, only one of these ledges, called the North Rock, shows its head above water. As all the others lie out of sight below the surface, they form one of the most dangerous traps that nature has ever set in the path of mariners. Dangerous though they be, however, there are few things more beautiful to look at than these groves of corallines when viewed through two or three fathoms of clear and still water. It is hardly an exaggeration to assert, that even the bright colours of the rainbow are put to shame, on a sunny day, by what meets the eye on looking into the calm sea in those fairy regions. On the other hand, there are not many things, in the anxious range of navigation, more truly terrific, or, in fact, more dangerous, than these same beautiful submarine flowerbeds, raising their treacherous heads, like the fascinating syrens of old, or the fair and false mermaids of a later epoch. If, by sad fortune, the unwary sailor once gets entangled among them, it is too well known that his chance of escape is but small.

They tell a story at Bermuda (“the still vexed Bermoothes” of Shakespeare) of a boatman who, it is said, lived by these disasters, and who once went off to an unlucky vessel, fairly caught, like a fly in a cobweb, amongst the coral reefs, not far from the North Rock. The wrecker, as persons of his trade are called, having boarded the bewildered ship, said to the master,—

“What will you give me now to get you out of this place?”

“Oh, anything you like—name your sum.”

“Five hundred dollars?”

“Agreed! agreed!” cried the other. Upon which the treacherous pilot “kept his promise truly to the ear, but broke it to the hope,” by taking the vessel out of an abominably bad place, only to fix her in one a great deal more intricate and perilous.

“Now,” said the wrecker to the perplexed and doubly-cheated stranger, “there never was a ship in this scrape, that was known to get out again;
and, indeed, there is but one man alive who knows the passages, or could, by any possibility, extricate you—and that’s me!”

“I suppose,” dryly remarked the captain, “that ‘for a consideration’ you would be the man to do me that good service. What say you to another five hundred dollars to put me into clear water, beyond your infernal reefs?”

The hard bargain was soon made; and a winding passage, unseen before, being found, just wide enough, and barely deep enough, for the vessel to pass through, with only six inches to spare under her keel, in half an hour she was once more in blue water, out of soundings, and out of danger.

“Now, master rapscallion of a wrecker,” cried the disentangled mariner, “tit for tat is fair play all the world over; and, unless you hand me back again my thousand dollars, I’ll cut the tow-rope of your thievish-looking boat, and then, instead of returning evil for evil, as I ought to do, I’ll be more of a Christian, and do you a very great service, by carrying you away from this infamous place to the finest country imaginable—America; and, as you seem to have a certain touch of black blood in your veins, I may chance to get good interest for my loan of these thousand dollars, by selling you for a slave in Charleston negro-market! What say you, my gay Mudian?”

We lay at Bermuda, moored in Murray’s anchorage, for the greater part of the winters of 1802 and 1803. There was no war, and, in the absence of active service, we were fain to catch at anything to amuse and occupy ourselves. The master, and a gang of youngsters who were fond of navigation, set about surveying the coral reefs already mentioned. This party of philosophers, as they were of course dubbed, landed on St. David’s Head, and other conspicuous points of land, to ascertain the longitude with more care; to observe the latitude and the variation of the compass; or to measure the perpendicular rise and fall of the tides; or, lastly, and much the most frequently, to have a good hour’s swim in the deliciously-warm sea.

At first-sight, many of these pursuits may appear trivial; but it ought to be recollected that, although it is easy enough to make such observations in a rough way, there is hardly any scientific experiment which does not demand much attention and labour. For example, it seems a very simple affair to draw a base or straight line on the ground; but if the measurement is to be very exact, or of a particular length, so as to be neither more nor less, the problem is one of great delicacy, and employs the talents of some of the ablest engineers of the day. In fact, these refinements in surveying and observing are pretty much like the pound-of-flesh question in the
Merchant of Venice,
with one comfortable difference, that the philosopher’s neck is not in such danger, even if, in a base of half-a-dozen miles, he should happen to err in the estimation by half-a-dozen hair-breadths! It is well for
young officers to recollect, however, that there is a professional tribunal before which a man who undertakes such tasks is apt to be arraigned, and, if found wanting, pretty severely dealt with.

Sailors, like the element upon which they are tossed about, are scarcely ever at rest: the moment a ship arrives at a port, the navigators straightway erect their observatory, fix up their instruments, set their clocks a-going, and commence their attack, like the giants of old.

One of our party of mids, who has since turned out a valuable and enterprising officer, took it in his head to make a trip in a whale-boat belonging to the Bermuda fishery. Having ascertained the time when the whale-boats started, he obtained leave to go on shore, and completely succeeded in his object by being present at the capture of a whale. The monster, however, led them a considerable dance off to sea, and long after the time appointed for his return the youth made his appearance, delightfully perfumed with blubber, and having a glorious tale to tell of his day’s adventures.

This was voted by acclamation to be “something like an expedition;” and the youngster, of course, gained great credit for his spirit. I was one of another party, who, I suppose, being a little jealous of our companion’s laurels, took the earliest opportunity of trying to signalize ourselves in a similar way. A large whale was seen one morning playing about the
Leander,
in Murray’s anchorage, and, of course, far within the belt of reefs already described as fringing the roadstead on its eastern and northern sides. How this great fellow had got into such a scrape, we could not conjecture. Possibly, in placing himself alongside one of the rugged coral ledges, to scrub off the incrustations of shell-fish, which torment these monsters of the deep, he had gradually advanced too far; or, more probably, he may have set out in pursuit of some small fry, and, before he was aware of it, had threaded his way among this labyrinth of rocks, till escape was impossible. At all events, he now found himself in comparatively deep water, from eight to ten fathoms, without any visible means of retreat from his coral trap. All hands crowded into the rigging to see the whale floundering about; till at length some one proposed, rashly enough, certainly, to pay him a visit in one of the ship’s boats, with no better implements, offensive or defensive, than the ordinary boat-hooks—light poles, not unlike a shepherd’s crook, with a spike and hook at the end; not bad things for fishing up a turtle when caught napping, but slender reeds, in all conscience, against a whale forty or fifty feet long!

Away we went, however, on our wild-goose whale-chase, without any precise idea what we were to do if we should come up with the game. As the great leviathan was approached, his aspect became more and more
formidable; and it became necessary to think of some regular plan of attack. As to defence, it may easily be imagined that was never thought of; yet one gentle whisk of his tail might have sent the cutter and her crew, boat-hooks, oars, and all, spinning over the fore yard-arm of the flagship. All eyes being now upon us, it was agreed unanimously, after a pause, that we should run right on board of him and take our chance. So we rowed forward; but the whale, whose back was then showing just above the water, like a ship keel upwards, perhaps not approving of our looks, or possibly not seeing us, slipped down, clean out of sight, leaving only a monstrous whirlpool of oily-looking water, in the vortex of which we continued whirling round for some time, like great ninnies as we were, and gaping about us. At this time, the boat lay not half a ship’s length from the
Leander;
so that our disappointment caused considerable amusement on board, and the people came laughing down from the rigging, where they had been perched, to see the grand fight between the whale and the young gentlemen!

While we were lying on our oars, and somewhat puzzled what to do next, we beheld one of the most extraordinary sights in the world; at least, I do not remember to have seen many things which have surprised me more or made a deeper impression on my memory Our friend the whale, probably finding the water disagreeably shallow (for, as I have said, it was not above fifty or sixty feet deep), or perhaps provoked at not being able to disentangle himself from the sharp coral reefs, or for some other reason of his own, suddenly made a spring out of the sea. So complete was this enormous leap that for an instant he was seen fairly up in the air, in a horizontal position, at a distance from the surface not much short, I should think, of half his own breadth. His back, therefore, must have been at least twenty feet, in perpendicular height, above our heads. While in his progress upwards there really appeared in his spring some touch of the vivacity which belongs to a trout or to a salmon shooting out of the water. The whale, however, fell back again on the sea, like a huge log thrown on its broadside; and with such a thundering crash as made all hands stare in astonishment, making even the “boldest hold his breath for a time.” Indeed, total demolition must have been the inevitable fate of our party had the whale taken his leap one minute sooner, for he would then have fallen plump on the boat! The surge of the waves caused by the explosion spread over half the anchorage! nor, if the
Leander
herself had blown up, could the effects have extended much further. As we rolled about in the cutter from side to side, we had time to balance the expediency of further proceedings against the tolerable chance of being smashed to atoms under the whale’s belly at his next leap. All idea of capturing him, therefore, was given up; if, indeed, any such frantic notion could ever seriously have
entered our heads. But our curiosity was vehemently roused to witness such another feat; and, after lying on our oars for some time, we once more detected the whale’s back at a little distance from us.

“Let us poke him up again!” cried one of the party.

“To be sure, let’s board him;” roared out the others; and away we dashed, in hopes of producing a repetition of this singular exploit. The whale, however, did not choose to exhibit any more, though we often succeeded in coming very near him. At last he fairly bolted, and took the direction of the North Rock, hoping, perhaps, to make his escape by the narrow passage probably known only to the most experienced denizens of those intricate submarine regions.

It was not until we had entirely lost sight of the chase, and when we had rowed so far that we could just see the top of St. George’s Island astern of us, that we had leisure to remark the change of weather which had taken place during this absurd pursuit. The sky had become overcast, and the wind had risen to a smart breeze from the south-west, and when we again put the boat’s head towards the island, it was quite as much as we could do to make any headway at all, and sometimes we hardly held our own. Had the wind increased a little more, we must inevitably have been blown to sea; even as it was, it cost us many hours of the severest tugging at the oars to regain the anchorage just before nightfall—the fishing party completely worn out.

During the long winters of our slothful residence at Bermuda, the grand resource among the
Leander
’s officers was shooting—that never-ending, still-beginning amusement, which Englishmen carry to the remotest corners of the habitable globe. If Captain Parry had reached the Pole, he would unquestionably have had a shot at the axis of the earth!