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atronly kindness and consideration, left her daughter and me very much alone and together that forenoon and evening. After I had made my little preparations for embarking, laid in my sea-stock, and arranged for my passage in the British brig the Ballahoo, I returned in the evening just as the night was closing in. I found Helen sitting alone in the boudoir, and I could not but perceive that she had been weeping.
"I hope so--I trust so, Benjamin--but in such a climate who can promise themselves a happy or a certain meeting? Have we not ourselves met friends in the morning, who never saw the sun rise again? Oh, Benjamin, my heart is fond and foolish."
"Well, well, Helen, but cheer up, my sweet girl--our prospects are fair compared to poor De Walden's."
"True, and so they are--poor Sophie, too--but there has been no declaration on his part"--as if willing to lead the conversation from our own sorrows.--"He is the most open-hearted lad, Benjamin, I ever met. Early in the forenoon, yesterday, he told Sophie, that except Sir Oliver Oakplank, he had not one friend in the wide world who cared a straw about him; what claim he had on him he did not say--that he had nothing to look to, but getting on in the service through his own exertions; and more than once he has already told my mother, that if there had been the smallest chance of joining his frigate in Jamaica, he would instantly have left Havanna, had he even worked his passage. He said he feared it was neither prudent nor honourable his remaining here. Poor, poor Henry."
"Did he say any thing of his early life?" said I, my curiosity getting the better of my propriety of feeling.
I broke off, for I durst not say out my say; but in furtherance of my determination, after parting with my friends for the night, and stealing a kiss from little Dicky as he slept like a rose bud steeped in dew; with the assistance of William Hudson, I got my small kit away without suspicion, and repaired on board the Ballahoo.
When I got on the deck of the brig it was quite dark, and every thing was in great confusion, preparatory to getting under weigh in the morning. The crew--blacks, browns, and whites, Englishmen and Spaniards--were gabbling aloft and shouting below, as some were bending sails, and others hoisting them up to the yards; while others were tumbling about bales of tobacco on deck, and lowering them down the hatchway, where a number of hired negroes were stowing the same away in the hold. Her cargo consisted of logwood, hides, and tobacco, the blending of the effluvia from the two latter being any thing but ambrosial.
"A new scene to you, Mr Brail, I presume?"
"It is so, certainly. Are our friends there not afraid that those black fellows who are bustling about may take a fancy to some of these rouleaux of doubloons, that they are packing away into their portmanteaus, and trunks there?"
"No, no," rejoined he, smiling; "most of these poor fellows are household slaves, who have been, very probably, born and bred up in their families; not a few may even be their foster brothers, and all of that class are perfectly trustworthy; in truth, sir, as an Englishman, I am sorry to say it, but they treat their domestic negroes infinitely better than we do. As to the field slaves, I cannot judge, but I can speak as to the fact of the others from long experience. A Spanish family look on negroes of this class as part and portion of the household; in fact, they are not bondsmen at all, except in name; for they are better cared for than servants, be they white or black, in any other countries I know. Indeed, now that I reflect, you must have noticed, they don't even suffer the humiliation of being called 'slave,'--'criado,' the common name given them by their masters, signifying literally servant. The harsher, 'esclavo,' being seldom, indeed never, applied to them, unless when they have been guilty of some default."
"Heavens!" I here exclaimed, "what, are they all going to bed, with your supper untouched on the table?--see if they be not undressing!"
These transactions taking place in a confined well-cabin, lit by a small skylight, with the thermometer standing at ninety-five, had no very great purifying effect on the atmosphere--the blended steam of human carcasses and tallow candles being any thing but savoury.
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