



Produced by John Edward Heaton






TOM CRINGLE'S LOG

By Michael Scott

(1789--1835)




CHAPTER I.--The Launching of the Log.


Dazzled by the glories of Trafalgar, I, Thomas Cringle, one fine morning
in the merry month of May, in the year one thousand eight hundred and so
and so, magnanimously determined in my own mind, that the United Kingdom
of Great Britain and Ireland should no longer languish under the want of a
successor to the immortal Nelson, and being then of the great
perpendicular altitude of four feet four inches, and of the mature age of
thirteen years, I thereupon betook myself to the praiseworthy task of
tormenting, to the full extent of my small ability, every man and woman
who had the misfortune of being in any way connected with me, until they
had agreed to exert all their interest, direct or indirect, and
concentrate the same in one focus upon the head and heart of Sir Barnaby
Blueblazes, vice-admiral of the red squadrons a Lord of the Admiralty,
and one of the old plain K.B.'s (for he flourished before the time when a
gallant action or two tagged half of the letters of the alphabet to a
man's name, like the tail of a paper kite), in order that he might be
graciously pleased to have me placed on the quarterdeck of one of his
Majesty's ships of war without delay.

The stone I had set thus recklessly a-rolling, had not been in motion
above a fortnight, when it fell with unanticipated violence, and crushed
the heart of my poor mother, while it terribly bruised that of me, Thomas;
for as I sat at breakfast with the dear old woman, one fine Sunday morning,
admiring my new blue jacket and snow white trowsers, and shining well
soaped face, and nicely brushed hair, in the pier glass over the chimney
piece, I therein saw the door behind me open, and Nicodemus, the waiting
man, enter and deliver a letter to the old lady, with a formidable looking
seal.

I perceived that she first ogled the superscription, and then the seal,
very ominously, and twice made as if she would have broken the missive
open, but her heart seemed as often to fail her. At length she laid it
down-heaved a long deep sigh--took off her spectacles, which appeared
dim-wiped them, put them on again, and making a sudden effort, tore open
the letter, read it hastily over, but not so rapidly as to prevent her hot
tears falling with a small tiny tap tap on the crackling paper.

Presently she pinched my arm, pushed the blistered manuscript under my
nose, and utterly unable to speak to me, rose, covered her face with her
hands, and left the room weeping bitterly. I could hear her praying in a
low, solemn, yet sobbing and almost inarticulate voice, as she crossed the
passage to her own dressing-room.--"Even as thou wilt, oh Lord--not mine,
but thy holy will be done--yet, oh! it is a bitter bitter thing for a
widowed mother to part with her only boy."

Now came my turn--as I read the following epistle three times over, with
a most fierce countenance, before thoroughly understanding whether I was
dreaming or awake--in truth, poor little fellow as I was, I was fairly
stunned.

"Admiralty, such a date.

"DEAR MADAM,
It gives me very great pleasure to say that your son is appointed to the
Breeze frigate, now fitting at Portsmouth for foreign service. Captain
Wigemwell is a most excellent officer, and a good man, and the
schoolmaster on board is an exceedingly decent person I am informed; so I
congratulate you on his good fortune in beginning his career, in which I
wish him all success, under such favourable auspices. As the boy is, I
presume, all ready, you had better send him down on Thursday next, at
latest, as the frigate will go to sea, wind and weather permitting,
positively on Sunday morning."

"I remain, my dear Madam,"

"Yours very faithfully,"

"BARNABY BLUEBLAZES, K.B."

However much I had been moved by my mother's grief, my false pride came to
my assistance, and my first impulse was to chant a verse of some old tune,
in a most doleful manner. "All right--all right," I then exclaimed, as I
thrust half a doubled up muffin into my gob, but it was all chew, chew,
and no swallow--not a morsel could I force down my parched throat, which
tightened like to throttle me.

Old Nicodemus had by this time again entered the room, unseen and unheard,
and startled me confoundedly, as he screwed his words in his sharp cracked
voice into my larboard ear. "Jane tells me your mamma is in a sad taking,
Master Tom. You ben't going to leave us, all on a heap like, be you?
Surely your stay until your sister comes from your uncle Job's? You know
there are only two on ye--You won't leave the old lady all alone, Master
Thomas, win ye?' The worthy old fellow's voice quavered here, and the
tears hopped over his old cheeks through the flour and tallow like peas,
as he slowly drew a line down the forehead of his well-powdered pate,
with his fore-finger.

"No--no--why, yes," exclaimed I, fairly overcome; "that is--oh Nic, Nic
you old fool, I wish I could cry, man--I wish I could cry!" and
straightway I hied me to my chamber, and wept until I thought my very
heart would have burst.

In my innocence and ignorance, child as I was, I had looked forward to
several months preparation; to buying and fitting of uniforms, and dirks,
and cocked hat, and swaggering therein, to my own great glory, and the
envy of all my young relations; and especially I desired to parade my
fire--new honours before the large dark eyes of my darling little creole
cousin, Mary Palma; whereas I was now to be bundled on board, at a few
days warning, out of a ready-made furnishing shop, with lots of ill-made,
glossy, hard mangled duck trowsers, the creases as sharp as the backs of
knives, and--"oh, it never rains, but it pours," exclaimed I; "surely all
this promptitude is a little de plus in Sir Barnaby."

However, away I was trundled at the time appointed, with an aching heart,
to Portsmouth, after having endured the misery of a first parting from a
fond mother, and a host of kind friends; but, miserable as I was,
according to my preconceived determination, I began my journal the very
day I arrived, that nothing connected with so great a man should be lost,
and most weighty did the matters therein related appear to me at the time;
but seen through the long vista of, I won't say how many years, I really
must confess that the Log, for long long after I first went to sea in the
Breeze, and subsequently when removed to the old Kraaken line-of-battle
ship, both of which were constantly part of blockading squadrons, could be
compared to nothing more fitly than a dish of trifle, anciently called
syllabub, with a stray plum here and there scattered at the bottom. But
when, after several weary years, I got away in the dear old Torch, on a
separate cruise, incidents came fast enough with a vengeance--stem,
unyielding, iron events, as I found to my heavy cost, which spoke out
trumpet-tongued and fiercely for themselves, and whose tremendous
simplicity required no adventitious aid in the narration to thrill through
the hearts of others. So, to avoid yarn-spinning, I shall evaporate my
early Logs, and blow off as much of the froth as I can, in order to
present the residuum free of flummery to the reader--just to give him a
taste here and there, as it were, of the sort of animal I was at that
time. Thus:

Thomas Cringle, his log-book.

Arrived in Portsmouth by the Defiance at ten, A.M. on such a day.
Waited on the Commissioner, to whom I had letters, and said I was
appointed to the Breeze. Same day, went on board and took up my berth;
stifling hot; mouldy biscuit; and so on. My mother's list makes it
fifteen shirts, whereas I only have twelve.

Admiral made the signal to weigh, wind at S.W. fresh and squally.
Stockings should be one dozen worsted, three of cotton, two of silk; find
only half a dozen worsted, two of cotton, and one of silk.

Fired a gun and weighed.

Sailed for the Fleet off Vigo, deucidly sea-sick was told that fat pork
was the best specific, if bolted half raw; did not find it much of a tonic
passed a terrible night, and for four hours of it obliged to keep watch,
more dead than alive. The very second evening we were at sea, it came on
to blow, and the night fell very dark, with heavy rain. Towards eight
bells in the middle watch, I was standing on a gun well forward on the
starboard side, listening to the groaning of the main-tack, as the
swelling sail, the foot of which stretched transversely right athwart the
ship's deck in a black arch, struggled to tear it up, like some dark
impalpable spirit of the air striving to burst the chains that held him,
and escape high up into the murky clouds, or a giant labouring to uproot
an oak, and wondering in my innocence how hempen cord could brook such
strain when just as the long waited-for strokes of the bell sounded
gladly in mine ear, and the shrill clear note of the whistle of the
boatswain's mate had been followed by his gruff voice, grumbling hoarsely
through the gale, "Larboard watch, ahoy!" The look-out at the weather
gangway, who had been relieved, and beside whom I had been standing a
moment before, stepped past me, and scrambled up on the booms "Hillo,
Howard, where away, my man?" said I.

"Only to fetch my"--

Crack!--the main tack parted, and up flew the sail with a thundering flap,
loud as the report of a cannon-shot, through which, however, I could
distinctly hear a heavy smash, as the large and ponderous blocks at the
clew of the sail struck the doomed sailor under the ear, and whirled him
off the booms over the fore-yard-arm into the sea, where he perished, as
heaving-to was impossible, and useless if practicable, as his head must
have been smashed to atoms.

This is one of the stray plums of the trifle, what follows is a whisk of
the froth, written when we looked into Corunna, about a week after the
embarkation of the army:--

     MONODY ON THE DEATH OF SIR JOHN MOORE.

     Farewell, thou pillar of the war,
     Warm-hearted soldier, Moore, farewell,
     In honour's firmament a star,
     As bright as ere in glory fell.

     Deceived by weak or wicked men,
     How gallantly thou stood'st at bay,
     Like lion hunted to his den,
     Let France tell, on that bloody day.

     No boastful splendour round thy bier,
     No blazon'd trophies o'er thy grave;
     But thou had'st more, the soldier's tear,
     The heart-warm offering of the brave.

     On Lusitania's rock-girt coast,
     All coffinless thy relics lie,
     Where all but honour bright was lost,
     Yet thy example shall not die.

     Albeit no funeral knell was rung,
     Nor o'er thy tomb in mournful wreath
     The laurel twined with cypress hung,
     Still shall it live while Britons breathe.

     What though, when thou wert lowly laid,
     Instead of all the pomp of woe,
     The volley o'er thy bloody bed
     Was thunder'd by an envious foe:--

     Inspired by it in after time,
     A race of heroes will appear,
     The glory of Britannia's clime,
     To emulate thy bright career.

     And there will be, of martial fire,
     Those who all danger will endure;
     Their first, best aim, but to aspire
     To die thy death--the death of Moore.

To return. On the evening of the second day, we were off Falmouth, and
then got a slant of wind that enabled us to lie our course.

Next morning, at daybreak, saw a frigate in the northeast quarter, making
signals;--soon after we bore up. Bay of Biscay--tremendous swell--Cape
Finisterre--blockading squadron off Cadiz--in-shore squadron--and so on,
all trifle and no plums.

At length the Kraaken, in which I had now served for some time, was
ordered home, and sick of knocking about in a fleet, I got appointed to a
fine eighteen-gun sloop, the Torch, in which we sailed on such a day for
the North Sea--wind foul--weather thick and squally; but towards evening
on the third day, being then off Harwich, it moderated, when we made more
sail, and stood on, and next morning, in the cold, miserable, drenching
haze of an October daybreak, we passed through a fleet of fishing-boats
at anchor. "At anchor," thought I, "and in the middle of the sea,"--but so
it was--all with their tiny cabooses, smoking cheerily, and a solitary
figure, as broad as it was long, stiffly walking to and fro on the
confined decks of the little vessels. It was now that I knew the value of
the saying, "a fisherman's walk, two steps and overboard." With regard to
these same fishermen, I cannot convey a better notion of them, than by
describing one of the two North Sea pilots whom we had on board. This
pilot was a tall, raw-boned subject, about six feet or so, with a blue
face--I could not call it red--and a hawk's-bill nose of the colour of
bronze. His head was defended from the weather by what is technically
called a south-west, pronounced sow-west,--cap, which is in shape like
the thatch of a dustman, composed of canvass, well tarred, with no snout,
but having a long flap hanging down the back to carry the rain over the
cape of the jacket. His chin was embedded in a red comforter that rose to
his ears. His trunk was first of all cased in a shirt of worsted
stocking-net; over this he had a coarse linen shirt, then a thick cloth
waistcoat; a shag jacket was the next layer, and over that was rigged the
large cumbrous pea jacket, reaching to his knees. As for his lower spars,
the rig was still more peculiar;--first of all, he had on a pair of most
comfortable woollen stockings, what we call fleecy hosiery--and the
beauties are peculiarly nice in this respect--then a pair of strong
fearnaught trowsers; over these again are drawn up another pair of
stockings, thick, coarse, rig-and-furrowed as we call them in Scotland,
and above all this were drawn a pair of long, well-greased, and liquored
boots, reaching half-way up the thigh, and altogether impervious to wet.
However comfortable this costume may be in bad weather in board, it is
clear enough that any culprit so swathed, would stand a poor chance of
being saved, were he to fall overboard. The wind now veered round and
round, and baffled, and checked us off, so that it was the sixth night
after we had taken our departure from Harwich before we saw Heligoland
light. We then bore away for Cuxhaven, and I now knew for the first time
that we had a government emissary of some kind or another on board,
although he had hitherto confined himself strictly to the captain's
cabin.


All at once it came on to blow from the north-east, and we were again
driven back among the English fishing boats. The weather was thick as
buttermilk, so we had to keep the bell constantly ringing, as we could not
see the jib-boom end from the forecastle. Every now and then we heard a
small, hard, clanking tinkle, from the fishing-boats, as if an old pot
had been struck instead of a bell, and a faint hollo, "Fishing-smack," as
we shot past them in the fog, while we could scarcely see the vessels at
all. The morning after this particular time to which I allude, was darker
than any which had gone before it; absolutely you could not see the
breadth of the ship from you; and as we had not taken the sun for five
days, we had to grope our way almost entirely by the lead. I had the
forenoon watch, during the whole of which we were amongst a little fleet
of fishing-boats, although we could scarcely see them, but being
unwilling to lose ground by lying to, we fired a gun every half hour, to
give the small craft notice of our vicinity, that they might keep their
bells a-going. Every three or four minutes, the marine drum-boy, or some
amateur performer,--for most sailors would give a glass of grog any day to
be allowed to beat a drum for five minutes on end--beat a short roll, and
often as we drove along, under a reefed foresail, and close reefed
topsails, we could hear the answering tinkle before we saw the craft from
which it proceeded; and when we did perceive her as we flew across her
stern