a six weeks' stay in the island, and The Humane Hopwood getting Freight in the way of Sugar, Captain Handsell bade me good by, and set sail with a fair wind for Bristol, England. I never set Eyes upon him again. You see, my Friends, that this is no cunningly-spun Romance, in which a character disappears for a Season, and turns up again, as pat as you please, at the end of the Fourth Volume; but a plain Narrative of Facts, in which the Personages introduced must needs Come and Go precisely as they Came and Went to me in Real Life. I have often wished, when I had Power and Riches, to meet with and show my Gratitude to the rough old Sea-Porpoise that used to Rope's-End me so, and was so tearing a Tyrant to his Hands, and yet in a mere fit of kind-heartedness played the Honest Man to me, when All Things seemed against me, and rescued John Dangerous from a Foul and Wicked Trap.
Maum Buckey had a great rambling house – it had but one Storey, with a Piazza running round, but a huge number of Rooms and Yards – in the suburbs of Kingston. There did I take up my abode. She had at least twenty Negro and Mulotter Women and Girls that worked for her at the Washing, and at Starching and Ironing, for the Mill was always going with her. 'Twas wash, wash, wash, and wring, wring, wring, and scrub, scrub, scrub, all day and all night too, when the harbour was full of ships. Not that she ever touched Soapsuds or Flat-iron or Goffering-stick herself. She was vastly too much of a Fine Lady for that, and would loll about in a great chair, – one Negro child fanning her with a great Palmetto, and another tickling the soles of her feet, – sipping her Sangaree as daintily as you please. She was the most ignorant old creature that ever was known, could neither read nor write, and made a sad jumble of the King's English when she spoke; yet, by mere natural quickness and rule-of-thumb, she could calculate to a Joe how much a Shipmaster's Washing-Bill came to. And when she had settled that according to her Scale of Charges, which were of the most Exorbitant Kind, she would Grin and say, "He dam ship, good consignee;" or, "He dam ship, dam rich owner; stick him on 'nother dam fi' poun' English, my chile;" and for some curious reason or another, 'twas seldom that a shipmaster cared to quarrel with Maum Buckey's Washing-Bills. She, being so unlettered, had been compelled to engage all manner of Whites who could write and read – now Transports, now Free – to keep her accounts, and draw her necessary writings; but it was hard to tell which were the greatest Rogues, the Convicts whose term was out, or the Free Gentlemen who had come out without a pair of iron garters to their hose. In those days all our plantations, and Jamaica most notably, were full of the very Scum and Riffraff of our English towns. 'Twas as though you had let Fleet Ditch, dead dogs and all, loose on a West-India Island. That Ragged Regiment which Falstaff in the Play would not march through Coventry with were at free quarters in Jamaica, leave alone the regular garrison of King's Troops, of which the private men were mostly pickpockets, poachers, and runaway serving-men, who had enlisted to save themselves from a merry-go-round at Rope Fair; and the officers the worst and most abandoned Gentlemen that ever wore his Majesty's cockade, and gave themselves airs because they had three-quarters of a yard of black ribbon crinked up in their hats. Captain This, who had been kicked out of a Charing-Cross coffee-house for pocketing a Punch-ladle while the drawer was not looking; Lieutenant That, who had been caned on the Mall for cheating at cards; and Ensign T'other, who had been my lord's valet, and married his Madam for enough cash to buy a pair of colours withal – Military gentlemen of this feather used to serve in the West Indies in those days, and swagger about Kingston as proud as peacocks, when every one of them had done that at home they should be cashiered for. Maum Buckey would not have to do with these light-come-light-go gallants. "Me wash for Gem'n Ship-Cap'n, Gem'n Marchants, Gem'n Keep-store," she would observe; "me not wash for dam Soger-officer."
Her Sugar Plantation was in charge of a shrewd North-countryman, against whom, save that he was a runaway bankrupt from Hull in England, there was nothing to say. Her Coffee Estate was managed by an Irishman that had married, as he thought, a great Fortune, but found the day after his wedding that she but a fortune-hunter like himself, and had at least three husbands living in divers parts of the world. And finally, the Distillery had for overseer one, an Englishman, that had been a Horse Couper, and a runner for the Crimps at Wapping, and a supercargo that was not too honest, – albeit he had to keep his accounts pretty square with Maum Buckey, than whom there never was a woman who had a keener Eye for business or a finer Scent for a Rogue.
She made me her Bookkeeper for the Washing Department. 'Twas not a very dignified Employment for one that had been a young Gentleman, but 'twas vastly better than the Fate of one who, but for a mere Accident, might have been a young Slave. So I kept Maum Buckey's Books, teaching myself how to do so featly from a Ready Reckoner and Accomptant's Assistant (Mr. Cocker's), which I bought at a Bookstore in Kingston. The work was pretty hard, and the old Dame of the Tub kept me tightly enough at it; but when the work was over she was very kind to me, and we had the very best of living: ducks and geese and turkeys and pork (of which the Mulotter women are inordinately fond, although I never could reconcile to myself how their stomachs, in so hot a climate, could endure so Luscious a Food); fish of the primest from the Harbour of Port Royal, lobsters and crabs and turtle (which last is as cheap as Tripe with us, and so plentiful, that the Niggers will sometimes disdain to eat it, though 'tis excellent served as soup in the creature's own shell, and a most digestible Viand); to say nothing of bananas, shaddock, mango, plantains, and the many delicious fruits and vegetables of that Fertile Colony; where, if the land-breeze in the morning did not half choke you with harsh dust, and the sea-breeze in the afternoon pierce you to the marrow with deadly chills, and if one could abstain from surfeits of fruits and over-drinking of the too abundant ardent spirits of the country, a man might live a very jovial kind of life. However, I was young and healthy, and, though never a shirker of my glass in after-days, prudently moderate in my Potations. During four years that I passed in the Island of Jamaica (one of the brightest jewels in the British Crown, and as Loyal, I delight to say, as I am myself), I don't think I had the Yellow Fever more than three times, and at last grew as tough as leather, and could say Bo to a land-crab (how many a White Man's carcass have those crabs picked clean at the Palisadoes!), as though I feared him no more than a Green Goose.
It may be fitting here that I should say something about that Abominable Curse of Negro Slavery, which was then so Familiar and Unquestioned a Thing in all our Colonies, that its innate and Detestable Wickedness was scarcely taken into account in men's minds. Speaking only by the Card, and of that which I saw with my own eyes, I don't think that Maum Buckey was any crueller other slave-owners of her class: for 'tis well known that the Mulotter women are far more severe task-mistresses than the Whites. But, Lord! Whites and coloured people, who in the West Indies are permitted, when free, to own their fellow-creatures who are only a shade darker in colour than they, left little to choose betwixt on the score of cruelty. When I tell you that I have seen Slave Women and Girls chained to the washing-tub, their naked bodies all one gore of blood from the lashes of the whip; that on the public wharf at Kingston I have seen a Negro man drawn up by his hands to a crane used for lifting merchandise, while his toes, that barely touched the ground, were ballasted with a thirty-pound weight, and, in that Trim, beaten with the Raw Hide or with Tamarind-Bushes till you could lay your two fingers in the furrows made by the whip (with which expert Scourgineers boast they can lay deep ruts in a Deal Board), or else I have seen the poor Miserable Wretch the next day lying on his face on the Beach, and a Comrade taking the prickles of the Tamarind-Stubs, which are tempered in the Fire, and far worse than English Thornbushes, out of his back; – you may imagine that 'twas no milk-and-water Regimen that the slaves in the West Indies had to undergo at the hands of their Hard masters and mistresses. Also, I have known slaves taken to the Sick-House, or Hospital, so dreadfully mangled with unmerciful correction as for their wounds to be one mass of putrefaction, and they shortly do give up the Ghost; while, at other times, I have seen unfortunate creatures that had been so lacerated, both back and front, as to be obliged to crawl about on All Fours. Likewise have I seen Negro men, Negro women, yea, and Negro children, with iron collars and prongs about their necks; with logs riveted to their legs, with their Ears torn off, their Nostrils slit, their Cheeks branded, and otherwise most frightfully Mutilated. Item, I have known at the dinner-table of a Planter of wealth and repute, the Jumper, or Public Flogger, to come in and ask if Master and Missee had any commands for him; and, by the order of the Lady of the House, take out two Decent Women that had been waiting at the table, and give them fifty lashes apiece on the public parade, every stroke drawing Blood and
