Lat.i.tude 19 degree.
by Mrs. Schuyler Crowninshield.
LAt.i.tUDE 19.
THE HOMESTEAD, BELLEVILLE, N. J.
_September 23, 1867._
_DEAR SON ADONIAH: In complying with your request that I jot down the facts with regard to my early experiences at the time when I was cast away, I have hardly known what to tell and what to leave untold. I could not relate to you the detailed occurrences of each day, though you will think that I have come quite near it, for it would have made a ma.n.u.script too large in size. I have told you much when we have been sitting by the fire on a winter evening, you with your leg on a chair, and little Adoniah hanging round you trying to persuade you to "make Grandpa stop," that you might tell him your more recent tale of interest of the battle of Gettysburg. Many a time, as we have been talking, I have seen your dear mother, always beautiful and always young--though she has been a grandmother now seven times, what with Mary"s children, and Gertrude"s, and yours--many a time I have seen her look at us disapprovingly, as if wondering what pleasure we can take in such gruesome tales, but I find that with most men adventure is as the breath of their nostrils, and that no matter what suffering they have undergone, they always hark back to the wild, exciting scenes of youth, forgetting the pain and dwelling only on the pleasure._
_Miserable as I have been at times, and in some pretty tight places, too, now that we are all happily at home together, I would not exchange one of those experiences for a pot full of gold. I would not give away the remembrance of them any more than you would have blotted from your memory that fight in the Wilderness, where you led so gallantly; any more than you would be willing to discard the scar on your leg, or the strap on your shoulder, the one gained because of the other._
_Sometimes, as I sit on the settle at the door of the farmhouse, when the sun has gone down and twilight is coming on, I dream those days all over again. I see the buccaneers in the cave. I experience again the suffocation of the cage in which they left me for dead. I see before me as plainly as if I held it in my hand, with those wondrous eyes intact, and shining like two living b.a.l.l.s of fire, that symbol of mysticism, the serpent ring. I see again the vaudoux dance and the long, light eyes of the Pythoness, which fascinated while they struck terror to the very soul. I again take part in those sad and dreary burials at sea, in which the dear old Skipper so revelled, and once more I find myself at Christophe"s Court, with all its magnificence, all its barbarity, and all its horrors, and I wonder if any other life ever crowded so much into itself in so short a s.p.a.ce of time. My letter must not be too long or tell too much in advance. I am not an author, son Adoniah, nor do I wield the pen of a ready writer even for my children. This has been to me a laborious task, though at the same time a labour of love._
_If you should show these recollections to some of your friends, they will probably discredit the statement that anthropophagi have lived in the recent times of which I write, and so near our own coast. What would they say, I wonder, should they meet my friend, the late United States Minister to the Island, and learn from him that the dreadful practice existed not only at the date of which I write, but that it is actually extant, though more concealed, at the present day. And we pour our gold into old Africa while New Africa, where these awful crimes are rampant, is but twelve hundred miles from Belleville!_
_Finally, son Adoniah, believe that I have set down nothing here which can not be substantiated by historians, by living witnesses, and by the published proceedings of courts of law._
_Your affectionate Father_, HIRAM JONES.
CHAPTER I.
OUR INVOLUNTARY LANDING.
I put my head down through the hatchway and called to Cynthia to come on deck. I always called her Cynthia to myself. What I said was:
"Come up, Miss Archer; I can see Christophe"s castle."
"You can"t!" she said. These words were uttered, I was convinced, more in astonishment than in contradiction. They issued from the funnel of a white cotton sunbonnet. The funnel appeared above the hatchcombings, then a pair of shoulders incased in blue dungaree followed suit, and, finally, the tall figure of Miss Cynthia Archer emerged from the open hatchway and stepped lightly on to the deck.
"Where is it?" she asked.
"I will answer that question if you will answer mine," I responded.
"I was never good at guessing riddles," she said.
"It"s no riddle," returned I.
"Oh, the same old question!" hazarded Cynthia. The handsome gray eyes looked out questioningly from the depths of the funnel. I nodded appealingly.
"You"ve got me up here under false pretences," said Cynthia. "I will go below again. I don"t believe there is any castle."
"There is, indeed, Miss Archer." I held the spygla.s.s tightly under my arm. "I will show where if you will answer me."
"The chronic question?"
"Yes, the chronic question."
Cynthia looked out at me, a world of sincerity shooting from her eyes.
"To tell you the truth," said she, "Jones is simply impossible! I couldn"t, really! Why, Mr. Jones, Jones is synonymous with anonymous.
And then _Hiram_ Jones!" She knew as well as I did myself what I wanted to ask her. I told her so.
Cynthia stood for a moment looking meditatively at me.
"I don"t know why I shouldn"t, after all," said she in a musing tone.
My heart leaped up into my throat.
"I might call you "J,"" she said.
"And I might call you "A,"" answered I. """A" was an archer and shot at a beau.""
"Shot with a bow, you mean," said Cynthia; "but, really, the words run, ""A" was an archer and shot at a frog.""
"Thank you," said I. Of course, she knew what I had in mind. I said it every time she came on deck. I made a point of it. I thought that she might get used to it after a while.
"You haven"t been up all day," said I reproachfully.
"There"s no variety in your conversation, Mr. Jones," said Cynthia. "The parrot is much more interesting. But when you called down that Christophe"s castle was in sight, I thought that perhaps you were in your right mind once more."
"If my present mind"s wrong, I shall never be right," said I, as I hove the wheel over to larboard to keep the Yankee Blade on her course.
"Archer"s so much prettier than Jones," said Cynthia in a dreamy, convincing tone. She reached out her hand and took the gla.s.s from me.
Her touch was like a magnet. I couldn"t have held it back to save my life. She stepped to the rail and rested the barrel of the gla.s.s upon one of the ratlines.
"Now where"s your castle?" she asked; and added, "How this ship rolls!"
"The wind is falling light," I said. "Seems to me we"re farther in sh.o.r.e than we ought to be.--Tomkins, did you keep her exactly on the course the Captain gave you?"
"Yessir," said Tomkins, without winking.
"Now where is it?" asked Cynthia.
I called one of the men to take the wheel and went to Cynthia"s side. I guided the gla.s.s very slowly to within a hair"s breadth of the imposing structure, ran it hurriedly past, so that the view was all in a blur, then I searched slowly and carefully for the thing that we had pa.s.sed by. Cynthia was not long deceived.
"Give me that gla.s.s, Mr. Jones," she said with dignity. "I will find the citadel if it is there."
"It is there, upon my soul!" said I. I saw that she was angry. "There!
Don"t you see that big pile of stone?"
"Where?"