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Captain Mugford: Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors, a novel by William H. G. Kingston |
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Chapter 1. Introductory |
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_ CHAPTER ONE. INTRODUCTORY We belong to a Cornish family of the greatest respectability and high antiquity--so say the county records, in which we have every reason to place the most unbounded confidence. The Tregellins have possessed the same estate for I do not know exactly how long; only I suppose it must have been some time after Noah disembarked from the ark, and, at all events, for a very long time. The estate of which I speak was in a wild part of the country, and not at that time very productive; but I believe that my father would not have parted with it for ten times its market value. It contained between four and five hundred acres of hill and dale, and rock and copse, and wood; its chief feature a lofty cape, which ran out for a considerable distance into the sea. On one side it was exposed to the almost unbroken sweep of the Atlantic Ocean; on the other it was washed by the tranquil waters of a deep bay, which formed a safe and picturesque harbour for numerous small craft which frequently took shelter there from press of weather when running up channel. That headland, where the happiest half-year of all my boyhood's days was passed, is now dotted with several pleasant summer residences; its acres are marked off by fences and walls, and variegated with the diverse crops of well-tilled fields, and on its bay-side are occasional small wharves for pleasure-boats. Fifty years ago it was very different, and, (though, perhaps, I may be an old fogey and have that grey-hair fashion of thinking, with an expressive shrug, "Ah, things are not as they were when I was a boy!") I must say, far more beautiful to my eyes than it is now. You have seen a bold, handsome-bearded, athletic sailor-fellow, with a manner combining the sunniness of calms, the dash of storms, and the romance of many strange lands about him. Now, if our admired hero should abandon his adventurous profession, and settle down quietly into the civilised career of an innkeeper, or village constable, or shopman, or sedate church clerk, and we chanced to meet him years after his "life on the ocean wave," it would probably be to find a sober-faced gentleman, with forehead a little bald, with somewhat of a paunch, with sturdy legs and gaiters, perhaps with a stiff stock and dignified white collar--altogether a very respectable, useful citizen. But the eye and the heart could not find in our excellent acquaintance the fascination which so charmed us in our _friend_ the brave sailor. So with our cape: fifty years ago, in all its natural wildness; in the beauty of its lonely beaches strewn with pieces of shivered waterlogged spars and great rusty remnants of ship-knees and keels; in the melancholy of those strips of short brown heath on the seaside, disappearing in the white sand; in the frowning outlines of the determined rocks that like fortresses defied their enemy the ocean; in the roll of crisp pasturage that in unbroken swells covered the long backbone of the cape; in the few giant old trees, and, more than all, in its character of freedom, loneliness, and isolation, there was a savage charm and dignity that the thrift and cultivation, the usefulness and comfort of civilisation's beauty can never equal. My first sight of the old cape was when I was about nine years of age. My father took me with him in a chaise from Bristol--two days' journey in those times; and I do not think now that my year's tour of Europe, fifteen years after, was half as full of incident and delight as that my first expedition of a few hours. I can recall how the man at the toll-gate hobbled to us on his crutch; how my father chatted with him for a few moments; how, as we drove off, the man straightened himself on his crutch and touched the brim of his hat with the back of his hand. How well I remember the amazement with which I then heard my father say, "Robert, that man lost his leg while fighting under the great Duke in the Peninsula." I thrust my head far out of the chaise to look well at my first live hero. That sight was romance enough for an hour. Then the first glimpse of the top of the high cape, and my father's telling me that where I saw the haze beyond was the ocean, were sources of further reverie and mystery, dispelled, however, very suddenly when directly afterwards a wheel came off the chaise and pitched me into the road, with my father's small valise on my stomach. I remember the walk to the nearest house, which happened to be an inn, and how my father took off a large tumbler of ale, and gave me some biscuits and a glass of water. It occurred to me, I recollect, whether, when I became a man, I should be able to drink a full glass of ale and not be a drunkard, and whether my son would take biscuits and water and I not be conscious that he wanted to taste the ale. A thousand things more I remember--mere trifles in reality, but abounding in great interest to me on my first journey, which really then seemed of as much importance as Captain Cook's voyage around the world or Mungo Park's travels in Africa. It was a delightful day, the most interesting chapter in my life up to that time--brimful of novelty, thought, and excitement--but I shall not write its events in detail. What I have already mentioned will do as a sample. Late in the afternoon--it was the afternoon of a September day, the first fine one after a three days' storm--we reached the cape, just as the short sombre twilight of an autumn day settled down on land and sea. As the horse trudged laboriously along through the heavy piece of sand connecting the cape and the mainland, I was almost terrified by the great sound of waves, whose spray tossed up in vast spouts from every rocky head before us. The rush of waters, the rumbling of great stones receding with the current, the booming as of ships' broadsides--all these united to awe a little boy making his first acquaintance with the ocean. When we drove up to the house, which was the only habitation on the point, not a light was to be seen, and the dark stone walls were blacker than the night that had settled down so quickly on the land. My father said there was no use to knock, for that old Juno lived in the back part of the house and was too deaf to hear us. So he led the horse round, and we went to the back windows. Through them we saw our old black castellan nodding, pipe in mouth, over the fireplace. She had not heard the noise of our wheels, and it required a vigorous pounding on the heavy back-door before old Juno, in much trembling, opened it to us. "Oh my, Massa Tregellins, is dat you dis dark night! And Clump, de ole nigger, gone to willage. Lor, massa, how you did frighten me--and, oh my! thar's young Massa Bob!" Juno had often come up to Bristol to see us, and felt an engrossing interest in all of the family. She now led me into the house, and went as briskly to work as her rheumatic old limbs would allow, to make a good fire--piling on logs, blowing with the bellows, and talking all the while with the volubility of a kind old soul of fully sixty years of age. My father had gone to tie up the horse under the shed until Clump should return and take care of him. Clump was Juno's husband, and her senior by many years. The exact age of negroes is always of unreliable tradition. The two had charge of the house, and were, indeed, rulers of the entire cape. Clump cultivated vegetables sufficient for his wife and himself, and was also a skilful fisherman. His duties were to look after the copses and fences and gates, and to tend the numerous sheep that found a living on the cape; in which tasks Juno helped him, besides keeping the old house free from ghosts and desolation--indeed, a model of neatness and coziness. I must now pause for a minute and describe how it happened that the two old negroes were living on that out-of-the-way farm in Cornwall. My father had been a West Indian proprietor, and had resided out in the West Indies for many years. It was in the days when Wilberforce and true and noble philanthropists who fought the battle of emancipation with him first began to promulgate their doctrines. My father, like most other proprietors, was at first very indignant at hearing of proceedings which were considered to interfere with their rights and privileges, and he was their strenuous opponent. To enable himself still more effectually to oppose the emancipists, he sent for all the works which appeared on the subject of emancipation, that he might refute them, as he believed himself fully able to do. He read and read on, and got more and more puzzled how to contradict the statements which he saw put forth, till at length, his mind being an honest and clear one, he came completely round to the opinion of the emancipists. He now conscientiously asked himself how, with his new opinions, he could remain a slaveholder. The property was only partly his, and he acted as manager for the rest of the proprietors. They, not seeing matters in the light in which he had been brought to view them, would not consent to free the slaves and, as they believed, not unnaturally, ruin the property as he desired. Then he proposed having the negroes educated and prepared for that state of freedom which, he assured his partners, he was certain they would some day ere long obtain. They replied that slaves were unfit for education, that the attempt would only set them up to think something of themselves, and certainly spoil them, and therefore neither to this proposition would they agree. They were resolved that as the slaves were theirs by right of law--whatever God might have to say in the matter--slaves they should remain. At length my father determined, after praying earnestly for guidance, to have nothing personally to do with the unclean thing. Had he been able to improve the condition of the slaves, the case would have been different; but all the attempts he made were counteracted by his partners and by the surrounding proprietors, who looked upon him in the light of a dangerous lunatic. He therefore offered to give up his share in the property, provided he might be allowed to emancipate some of the slaves. To this even they would not consent, as they were afraid he might select the most able-bodied, and thus deprive the ground of some of its best cultivators. He did his best for the poor blacks, but the law was on the side of his partners, and, to do them justice, they, blinded by their interests and the contempt in which they held the negro race, considered they were right, and that he was wrong. All they would do was to allow him to select ten negroes from among a certain number whom they pointed out, and they agreed to pay him over a sum of money for his share of the land. To this proposal he was compelled to agree, and as West India property was at that time considered of great value, he received a very handsome sum, yet it must be owned not half what he might properly have claimed. With this he returned to England, and, as he was a man who could not bear to be idle, he commenced business as a general merchant at Bristol. Shortly after that he married, and my brothers and sisters and I in due course came into the world. Among the negroes he set free were Clump and his sable partner Juno, and so attached were they to him that they entreated that he would take them with him to England. Clump was, properly speaking, a free man; for having in his younger days, after he had married Juno, gone a short trip to sea, he was wrecked, and after meeting many adventures, finally pressed on board a man-of-war. He saw a good deal of service, (about which he was very fond of talking, by the by), and at last obtaining his discharge, or rather taking it, I suspect, with French leave--ever mindful of his beloved Juno, he returned voluntarily to a state of slavery, that he might enjoy life with her. The navy in those days was not what it now is, and he had not been in the enjoyment of any large amount of freedom. He had, indeed, being a good-natured, simple-hearted fellow, been sadly put upon both in the merchant service and navy. It was always, he used to say, "Clump, you don't want to go on shore, you stay and take care of the ship;" or, "Clump, you stay in the boat while we just take a run along the quay for five minutes;" or, "Clump, leave is no use to you, just let me have it instead of you;" or, "Clump, rum is a bad thing for niggers. I'll drink your grog to-day, and if you just tip me a wink I'll take half of it to-morrow, and let you have the rest, or Bill Noakes'll have the whole of it, and you'll get none." Clump and Juno being intelligent, trustworthy people, my father, as I have said, put them in charge of the farm on the cape, which they in a short time learned to manage with great judgment. Two other negroes he took into his service at Bristol. One of them became his butler, and it would have been difficult to find his equal in that capacity. Now a lesson may be learned from this history. My father did what he considered right, and prospered; his partners, neglecting to enlighten themselves as they might have done, persisted in holding their black fellow-creatures in abject slavery, refusing one of the great rights of man--a sound education. Emancipation was carried, and they received a large compensation, and rejoiced, spending their money extravagantly; but the half-savage negroes whom they had neglected to educate refused to work. Their estates were left uncultivated for want of labourers, and they were ruined. My father, managing his mercantile affairs wisely, was a prosperous man. His business on this visit was to see an adjoining property which had once belonged to the family, and which, being in the market, he hoped to repurchase. The house had been built as long back as 1540-1550. It was of stone-- the rough stone, as it had been taken from the beaches and cliffs, of different shades and kinds. Above the ground floor was only an attic storey; and the main part of the ground floor consisted of four large low rooms, panelled in wood, and with ceiling of dark, heavy beams. Adjoining the rear of these, my grandfather had built a comparatively modern kitchen; but every fireplace in the old house preserved the generous cheerful style of ample spread and fire-dogs. From the great door of the main floor a narrow stairway, like cabin steps, led up, with quaintly carved banisters, to five real old-fashioned bedrooms, rising above to the ridge of the steep-sloping roof and its uncovered but whitewashed rafters. The windows were at least five feet above the floor, and had the many small panes we sometimes yet see in very old houses. No doubt it was a house of pretension in its day. When I was a boy it remained a precious ark of family legends and associations. How splendid it is to possess a house nearly three hundred years old. To-day nothing could induce me to exchange the walls of that dear old house for the handsomest residence in Belgravia. A house can be built in a few months; but to make a home--that is beyond the craft and quickness of masons, carpenters, and architects. Alone on that bold, sea-beaten cape, so sturdy, dark, and time-worn, it looked out always with shrewd, steady little window-eyes on the great troubled ocean, across which it had watched the Pilgrim Fathers sailing away towards the new home they sought in the Western world, and many a rich argosy in days of yore go forth, never to return. It might have seen, too, the proud Spanish Armada gliding up channel for the purpose of establishing Popery and the Inquisition in Protestant England, to meet from the hands of a merciful Providence utter discomfiture and destruction. With satisfaction and becoming dignity, too, it seemed on fresh sunny mornings to gaze at the hundreds of sails dotting the sea, and bound for all parts of the globe, recalling, perhaps with some mournfulness, the days of its youth and the many other varied scenes of interest which it had witnessed on those same tossing billows from its lofty height. All through our supper, which was laid in the largest of the first floor rooms, did Juno stand by, repeating the refrain-- "Oh dat nigger, dat Clump,--why he no come? And here's Massa er waitten and er waitten; but Clump, ole mon, he get berry slow--berry, berry slow. Now Massa Bob, vy you laff at ole Juno so?--hi! hi!" However, Clump came at last; and when he beheld us, great and comical was his surprise. He dropped his basket to the floor, and, with battered hat in hand and both hands on his knees, stood for a moment and stared at us, and then his mouth stretched wide with joy and his sides shook with delight, while the tears trickled down from the wrinkled eyes to the laughing ivory. "Tank de Lord! tank de Lord! Clump lib to see his ole Massa agin; and dat young gemmen,--vy, lem'me see! vy, sure as I'm dat nigger Clump, ef dat ain't--Massa Drake?--no,--Massa Walter?--no,--vy Juno, ole woman! dat are Massa Bob!" He took my hands and shook and squeezed them, saying over and over again, "Massa Bob am cum ter see de ole cradle. Oh! hi hi!" _ |
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