It is now the 25th January, 1859, and if I do not reach Cien Fuegos by the 28th, all this misery6 will have been in vain. I might as well in such case have gone to St. Thomas, and spared myself these experiences of the merchant navy. Let it be understood by all men that in these latitudes7 the respectable, comfortable, well-to-do route from every place to every other place is via the little Danish island of St. Thomas. From Demerara to the Isthmus8 of Panamá, you go by St. Thomas. From Panamá to Jamaica and Honduras, you go by St. Thomas. From Honduras and Jamaica to Cuba and Mexico, you go by St. Thomas. From Cuba to the Bahamas, you go by St. Thomas—or did when this was written. The Royal Mail Steam Packet Company dispense9 all their branches from that favoured spot.
But I was ambitious of a quicker transit10 and a less beaten path, and here I am lying under the lee of the land, in a dirty, hot, motionless tub, expiating11 my folly12. We shall never make Cien Fuegos by the 28th, and then it will be eight days more before I can reach the Havana. May God forgive me all my evil thoughts!
Motionless, I said; I wish she were. Progressless should have been my word. She rolls about in a nauseous manner, disturbing the two sardines which I have economically eaten, till I begin to fear that my friend's generosity13 will become altogether futile14. To which result greatly tends the stench left behind it by the cargo15 of salt fish with which the brig was freighted when she left St. John, New Brunswick, for these ports. "We brought but a very small quantity," the skipper says. If so, that very small quantity was stowed above and below the very bunk16 which has been given up to me as a sleeping-place. Ugh!
"We are very poor," said the blue-nosed skipper when he got me on board. "Well; poverty is no disgrace," said I, as one does when cheering a poor man. "We are very poor indeed; I cannot even offer you a cigar." My cigar-case was immediately out of my pocket. After all, cigars are but as coals going to Newcastle when one intends to be in Cuba in four days.
"We are very poor indeed, sir," said the blue-nosed skipper again when I brought out my solitary18 bottle of brandy—for I must acknowledge to a bottle of brandy as well as to the small ham. "We have not a drop of spirits of any kind on board." Then I altered my mind, and began to feel that poverty was a disgrace. What business had this man to lure19 me into his stinking20 boat, telling me that he would take me to Cien Fuegos, and feed me on the way, when he had not a mouthful to eat, or a drop to drink, and could not raise a puff of wind to fill his sails? "Sir," said I, "brandy is dangerous in these latitudes, unless it be taken medicinally; as for myself, I take no other kind of physic." I think that poverty on shipboard is a disgrace, and should not be encouraged. Should I ever be on shore again, my views may become more charitable.
Oh, for the good ship 'Atrato,' which I used to abuse with such objurgations because the steward21 did not come at my very first call; because the claret was only half iced; because we were forced to close our little whist at 11 p.m., the serjeant-at-arms at that hour inexorably extinguishing all the lights! How rancorous were our tongues! "This comes of monopoly," said a stern and eloquent22 neighbour at the dinner-table, holding up to sight a somewhat withered23 apple. "And dis," said a grinning Frenchman from Martinique with a curse, exhibiting a rotten walnut24—"dis, dis! They give me dis for my moneys—for my thirty-five pounds!" And glancing round with angry eye, he dropped the walnut on to his plate.
Apples! and walnuts25!! What would I give for the 'Atrato' now; for my berth26, then thought so small; for its awning27; for a bottle of its soda28 water; for one cut from one of all its legs of mutton; for two hours of its steam movement! And yet it is only now that I am learning to forgive that withered apple and that ill-iced claret.
Having said so much about my present position, I shall be glad to be allowed to say a few words about my present person. There now exists an opportunity for doing so, as I have before me the Spanish passport, for which I paid sixteen shillings in Kingston the day before I left it. It is simply signed Pedro Badan. But it is headed Don Pedro Badan Calderon de la Barca, which sounds to me very much as though I were to call myself Mr. Anthony Trollope Ben Jonson. To this will be answered that such might have been my name. But then I should not have signed myself Anthony Trollope. The gentleman, however, has doubtless been right according to his Spanish lights; and the name sounds very grand, especially as there is added to it two lines declaring how that Don Pedro Badan is a Caballero. He was as dignified29 a personage as a Spanish Don should be, and seemed somewhat particular about the sixteen shillings, as Spanish and other Dons generally are.
He has informed me as to my "Talla," that it is Alta. I rather like the old man on the whole. Never before this have I obtained in a passport any more dignified description of my body than robust30. I certainly like the word "Alta." Then my eyes are azure31. This he did not find out by the unassisted guidance of personal inspection32. "Ojos, blue," he suggested to me, trying to look through my spectacles. Not understanding "Ojos," I said "Yes." My "cejas" are "casta?as," and so is my cabello also. Casta?as must be chestnut33, surely—cejas may mean eyebrows34—cabello is certainly hair. Now any but a Spaniard would have declared that as to hair, I was bald; and as to eyebrows, nothing in particular. My colour is sano. There is great comfort in that. I like the word sano. "Mens sana in corpore sano." What has a man to wish for but that? I thank thee once more, Don Pedro Badan Calderon de la Barca.
But then comes the mystery. If I have any personal vanity, it is wrapped up in my beard. It is a fine, manly35 article of dandyism, that wears well in all climates, and does not cost much, even when new. Well, what has the Don said of my beard?
It is poblada. I would give five shillings for the loan of a Spanish dictionary at this moment. Poblada! Well, my first effort, if ever I do reach Cuba, shall be made with reference to that word.
Oh; we are getting into the trade-winds, are we? Let ?olus be thanked at last. I should be glad to get into a monsoon36 or a simoom at the present moment, if there be monsoons37 and simooms in these parts. Yes; it comes rippling38 down upon us with a sweet, cool, airy breeze; the sails flap rather more loudly, as though they had some life in them, and then fill themselves with a grateful motion. Our three or four sailors rise from the deck where they have been snoring, and begin to stretch themselves. "You may put her about," says the skipper; for be it known that for some hours past her head has been lying back towards Port Royal. "We shall make fine track now, sir," he says, turning to me. "And be at Cien Fuegos on the 28th?" I demanded. "Perhaps, sir; perhaps. We've lost twenty-four hours, sir, doing nothing, you know."
Oh, wretched man that I am! the conveyance39 from Cien Fuegos to the Havana is but once a week.
The sails are still flopping40 against the yard. It is now noon on the 29th of January, and neither captain, mate, crew, nor the one solitary passenger have the least idea when the good brig —— will reach the port of Cien Fuegos; not even whether she will reach it at all. Since that time we have had wind enough in all conscience—lovely breezes as the mate called them. But we have oversailed our mark; and by how much no man on board this vessel41 can tell. Neither the captain nor the mate were ever in Cien Fuegos before; and I begin to doubt whether they ever will be there. No one knows where we are. An old stove has, it seems, been stowed away right under the compass, giving a false bias42 to the needle, so that our only guide guides us wrong. There is not a telescope on board. I very much doubt the skipper's power of taking an observation, though he certainly goes through the form of holding a machine like a brazen43 spider up to his eye about midday. My brandy and cigars are done; and altogether we are none of us jolly.
Flap, flap, flap! roll, roll, roll! The time passes in this way very tediously. And then there has come upon us all a feeling not expressed, though seen in the face of all, of utter want of confidence in our master. There is none of the excitement of danger, for the land is within a mile of us; none of the exhaustion44 of work, for there is nothing to do. Of pork and biscuits and water there is, I believe, plenty. There is nothing tragic45 to be made out of it. But comic misery wears one quite as deeply as that of a sterner sort.
It is hardly credible46 that men should be sent about a job for which they are so little capable, and as to which want of experience must be so expensive! Here we are, beating up the coast of Cuba against the prevailing47 wind, knowing nothing of the points which should guide us, and looking out for a harbour without a sea-glass to assist our eyes. When we reach port, be it Cien Fuegos or any other, the first thing we must do will be to ask the name of it! It is incredible to myself that I should have found my way into such circumstances.
I have been unable not to recount my present immediate17 troubles, they press with such weight upon my spirits; but I have yet to commence my journeyings at their beginning. Hitherto I have but told under what circumstances I began the actual work of writing.
On the 17th of November, 1858, I left the port of Southampton in the good ship 'Atrato.' My purposed business, O cherished reader! was not that of writing these pages for thy delectation; but the accomplishment48 of certain affairs of State, of import grave or trifling49 as the case may be, with which neither thou nor I shall have further concern in these pages. So much it may be well that I should say, in order that my apparently50 purposeless wanderings may be understood to have had some method in them.
And in the good ship 'Atrato' I reached that emporium of travellers, St. Thomas, on the 2nd of December. We had awfully51 bad weather, of course, and the ship did wonders. When men write their travels, the weather has always been bad, and the ship has always done wonders. We thought ourselves very uncomfortable—I, for one, now know better—and abused the company, and the captain, and the purser, and the purveyor52, and the stewards53 every day at breakfast and dinner; not always with the eloquence54 of the Frenchman and his walnut, but very frequently with quite equal energy. But at the end of our journey we were all smiles, and so was the captain. He was tender to the ladies and cordial to the gentlemen; and we, each in our kind, reciprocated55 his attention. On the whole, O my readers! if you are going to the West Indies, you may do worse than go in the 'Atrato.' But do not think too much of your withered apples.
I landed at St. Thomas, where we lay for some hours; and as I put my foot on the tropical soil for the first time, a lady handed me a rose, saying, "That's for love, dear." I took it, and said that it should be for love. She was beautifully, nay56, elegantly dressed. Her broad-brimmed hat was as graceful57 as are those of Ryde or Brighton. The well-starched skirts of her muslin dress gave to her upright figure that look of easily compressible bulk, which, let 'Punch' do what it will, has become so sightly to our eyes. Pink gloves were on her hands. "That's for love, dear." Yes, it shall be for love; for thee and thine, if I can find that thou deservest it. What was it to me that she was as black as my boot, or that she had come to look after the ship's washing?
I shall probably have a word or two to say about St. Thomas; but not now. It is a Niggery-Hispano-Dano-Yankee-Doodle place; in which, perhaps, the Yankee-Doodle element, declaring itself in nasal twang and sherry cobblers, seems to be of the strongest flavour; as undoubtedly58 will be the case in many of these parts as years go on revolving59. That nasal twang will sound as the Bocca Romana in coming fashionable western circles; those sherry cobblers will be the Falernian drink of a people masters of half the world. I dined at the hotel, but should have got a better dinner on board the 'Atrato,' in spite of the withered apples.
From St. Thomas we went to Kingston, Jamaica, in the 'Derwent.' We were now separated from the large host of Spaniards who had come with us, going to Peru, the Spanish Main, Mexico, Cuba, or Porto Rico; and, to tell the truth, we were not broken-hearted on the occasion. Spaniards are bad fellow-travellers; the Spaniard, at least, of the Western hemisphere. They seize the meats upon the table somewhat greedily; their ablutions are not plentiful60; and their timidity makes them cumbersome61. That they are very lions when facing an enemy on terra firma, I do not doubt. History, I believe, tells so much for them. But half a gale62 of wind lays them prostrate63, at all hours except feeding-time.
We had no Spaniards in the 'Derwent,' but a happy jovial64 little crew of Englishmen and Englishwomen—or of English subjects rather, for the majority of them belonged to Jamaica. The bad weather was at an end, and all our nautical65 troubles nearly over; so we ate and drank and smoked and danced, and swore mutual66 friendship, till the officer of the Board of Health visited us as we rounded the point at Port Royal, and again ruffled67 our tempers by delaying us for some thirty minutes under a broiling68 sun.
Kingston harbour is a large lagune, formed by a long narrow bank of sand which runs out into the sea, commencing some three or four miles above the town of Kingston, and continuing parallel with the coast on which Kingston is built till it reaches a point some five or six miles below Kingston. This sandbank is called "The Palisades," and the point or end of it is Port Royal. This is the seat of naval69 supremacy70 for Jamaica, and, as far as England is concerned, for the surrounding islands and territories. And here lies our flag-ship; and here we maintain a commodore, a dock-yard, a naval hospital, a pile of invalided71 anchors, and all the usual adjuncts of such an establishment. Some years ago—I am not good at dates, but say seventy, if you will—Port Royal was destroyed by an earthquake.
Those who are geographically72 inclined should be made to understand that the communication between Port Royal and Kingston, as, indeed, between Port Royal and any other part of the island, is by water. It is, I believe, on record that hardy73 Subs, and hardier74 Mids, have ridden along the Palisades, and not died from sun-stroke in the effort. But the chances are much against them. The ordinary ingress and egress75 is by water. The ferry boats usually take about an hour, and the charge is a shilling. The writer of these pages, however, has been two hours and a quarter in the transit.
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1
puff
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| n.一口(气)；一阵(风)；v.喷气，喘气 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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deluded
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| v.欺骗，哄骗( delude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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marine
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| adj.海的；海生的；航海的；海事的；n.水兵 | |
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sardines
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| n. 沙丁鱼 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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latitudes
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| 纬度 | |
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isthmus
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| n.地峡 | |
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dispense
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| vt.分配，分发；配(药)，发(药)；实施 | |
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transit
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| n.经过，运输；vt.穿越，旋转；vi.越过 | |
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expiating
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| v.为（所犯罪过）接受惩罚，赎（罪）( expiate的现在分词 ) | |
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folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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generosity
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| n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为 | |
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futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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cargo
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| n.(一只船或一架飞机运载的)货物 | |
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bunk
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| n.(车、船等倚壁而设的)铺位；废话 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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lure
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| n.吸引人的东西，诱惑物；vt.引诱，吸引 | |
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stinking
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| adj.臭的，烂醉的，讨厌的v.散发出恶臭( stink的现在分词 )；发臭味；名声臭；糟透 | |
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steward
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| n.乘务员，服务员；看管人；膳食管理员 | |
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eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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withered
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| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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walnut
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| n.胡桃，胡桃木，胡桃色，茶色 | |
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walnuts
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| 胡桃（树）( walnut的名词复数 )； 胡桃木 | |
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berth
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| n.卧铺，停泊地，锚位；v.使停泊 | |
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awning
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| n.遮阳篷；雨篷 | |
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soda
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| n.苏打水；汽水 | |
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dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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robust
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| adj.强壮的，强健的，粗野的，需要体力的，浓的 | |
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azure
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| adj.天蓝色的，蔚蓝色的 | |
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inspection
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| n.检查，审查，检阅 | |
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chestnut
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| n.栗树，栗子 | |
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eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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manly
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| adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地 | |
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monsoon
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| n.季雨，季风，大雨 | |
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monsoons
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| n.（南亚、尤指印度洋的）季风( monsoon的名词复数 )；（与季风相伴的）雨季；（南亚地区的）雨季 | |
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rippling
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| 起涟漪的，潺潺流水般声音的 | |
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conveyance
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| n.(不动产等的)转让，让与；转让证书；传送；运送；表达；（正）运输工具 | |
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flopping
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| n.贬调v.（指书、戏剧等）彻底失败( flop的现在分词 )；（因疲惫而）猛然坐下；（笨拙地、不由自主地或松弛地）移动或落下；砸锅 | |
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vessel
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| n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管 | |
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bias
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| n.偏见，偏心，偏袒；vt.使有偏见 | |
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brazen
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| adj.厚脸皮的，无耻的，坚硬的 | |
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exhaustion
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| n.耗尽枯竭，疲惫，筋疲力尽，竭尽，详尽无遗的论述 | |
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tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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credible
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| adj.可信任的，可靠的 | |
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prevailing
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| adj.盛行的；占优势的；主要的 | |
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accomplishment
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| n.完成，成就，（pl.）造诣，技能 | |
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trifling
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| adj.微不足道的；没什么价值的 | |
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50
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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52
purveyor
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| n.承办商，伙食承办商 | |
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stewards
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| （轮船、飞机等的）乘务员( steward的名词复数 )； （俱乐部、旅馆、工会等的）管理员； （大型活动的）组织者； （私人家中的）管家 | |
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54
eloquence
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| n.雄辩；口才，修辞 | |
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55
reciprocated
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| v.报答，酬答( reciprocate的过去式和过去分词 )；（机器的部件）直线往复运动 | |
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nay
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| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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revolving
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| adj.旋转的，轮转式的；循环的v.（使）旋转( revolve的现在分词 )；细想 | |
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plentiful
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| adj.富裕的，丰富的 | |
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cumbersome
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| adj.笨重的，不便携带的 | |
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gale
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| n.大风，强风，一阵闹声（尤指笑声等） | |
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prostrate
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| v.拜倒，平卧，衰竭；adj.拜倒的，平卧的，衰竭的 | |
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jovial
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| adj.快乐的，好交际的 | |
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nautical
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| adj.海上的，航海的，船员的 | |
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mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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ruffled
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| adj. 有褶饰边的, 起皱的 动词ruffle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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broiling
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| adj.酷热的，炽热的，似烧的v.（用火）烤（焙、炙等）( broil的现在分词 )；使卷入争吵；使混乱；被烤（或炙） | |
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naval
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| adj.海军的，军舰的，船的 | |
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70
supremacy
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| n.至上；至高权力 | |
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71
invalided
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| 使伤残（invalid的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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72
geographically
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| adv.地理学上，在地理上，地理方面 | |
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73
hardy
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| adj.勇敢的，果断的，吃苦的；耐寒的 | |
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74
hardier
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| 能吃苦耐劳的，坚强的( hardy的比较级 )； （植物等）耐寒的 | |
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75
egress
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| n.出去；出口 | |
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