Читать книгу: «The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 12, No. 340, Supplementary Number (1828)», страница 4

The Amulet

Edited by S.C. Hall, Esq

It would be difficult and somewhat egotistical for us to describe the pleasure we felt on our receiving this interesting volume for notice in our pages. The amiable spirit which breathes throughout its pages, and the good taste which uniformly dictates its editorship have secured the Amulet an extensive, and we are disposed to think, a more permanent, popularity than is attached to other works of similar form.¹

The present volume contains Fourteen Plates, among which are Murillo's Spanish Flower Girl; Etty's Guardian Angels, by Finden; a copy of Sir Thomas Lawrence's portrait of Lady Georgiana Fane, from Colnaghi's print; Eastlake's Italian Mother; one of Collins's last pictures, The Fisherman Leaving Home; The Temple of Victory, from Gandy,—all which are first-rate works of art.

There are eighty contributions, as the bookmakers say, "in prose and verse," with a predominance of the former. The first of the prose is a Strange Story of every day, by William Kennedy—well told, but too long for extract. The Mountain Daisy, a village sketch, by the Editor's lady, is gracefully written; and with the Fisherman, by the Editor, is a fair characteristic of the amiable spirit to which we have already alluded; and in the same tone of good feeling is the Rose of Fennock Dale, a true story by the fair authoress of the Mountain Daisy; and the Wandering Minstrels, by the Rev. F.A. Cox, L.L.D. Miss Mitford has contributed one of her inimitable sketches, Little Moses; but the most staple articles in the volume are The Battle of Bunaania, one of the Georgian Islands, by Mr. Ellis, the missionary; Notices of the Canadian Indians, by Dr. Walsh; a Journey over the Brocken, by Mr. Coleridge; and a Fragment, by Miss Jane Porter. Our prose selection is from the last of these articles; but we intend transferring a portion of Dr. Walsh's "Notices" to our next "Manners and Customs."

THE SOUTH SEA CHIEF

By Miss Jane Porter

While in the north of Europe, I met with a rather extraordinary person, whose account of himself might afford a subject for a pretty romance; a sort of new Paul and Virginia; but with what different catastrophe, it is not fair to presage. He described himself as a Frenchman, a native of Bourdeaux; where, at an early age, he was put on board a merchant ship, to learn the profession of a seaman. About that time war broke out between Great Britain, and the lately proclaimed Republic of France; and the vessel he was in, being attacked, and taken by an English man-of-war, he was carried a prisoner into England. When there, his naturally enterprising character would not submit itself to a state of captivity; and, soon making his wishes understood, he entered on board a British sloop, bound to New Holland. While gazing with rapt astonishment on the seeming new heavens which canopied that, to him, also, new portion of the globe; while the stars of the Cross were exciting his youthful wonder; and he could no where find the constellations of the Great, or Little Bear in the midnight firmament, the sky was suddenly overcast with a cloud, like the pall of nature, and a fearful tempest burst from it. The scene was dreadful on that wide waste of waters; and the vessel being driven at last into the rocky labyrinths of the Society Isles, was finally wrecked on one not many leagues from the celebrated Otaheite. Laonce, the young Frenchman, and one seaman of the sloop, an honest north Briton, were the only persons who escaped; for when morning broke, they found themselves, restored from insensibility, lying on the shore, and not a trace of the ship, or of those who had navigated her, was to be discerned. The inhabitants of the island, apparently wild savages by their almost naked state, instead of seizing them as a prey, took them to their huts, fed, and cherished them. Hope for awhile flattered them that some other vessel, bound for New Holland, might also be driven upon those islands, though not with the same hard fate, and that by her means they might be released, and conveyed back to Europe. But days, and weeks, and months, wearing away without any such arrival, they began to regard the expectation less, and to turn their minds to take a more intimate interest in objects around them. Time, indeed, accustomed them to what might be called barbarous, in the manners of the people; by degrees, even themselves laid aside their European habits; they exchanged their clothing for the half-exposed fashion of the native chiefs; and, adopting their pursuits and pleasures, became hunters, and bold fishers in the light canoe. Finally, they learnt to speak the language, as if they had been born in the island; and, at length, sealed their insular destiny by marrying native women. Laonce was hardly eighteen when he was first cast ashore amongst them; but having a handsome person, and those engaging manners, from a naturally amiable disposition added to a gentleman's breeding, which never fail agreeably impressing even the rudest minds, the eye of female tenderness soon found him out; and the maiden, being the daughter of the king, and beautiful withal, had only to hint her wishes to her royal sire; and the king naming them to their distinguished object, she immediately became his happy bride. Laonce, becoming thus royally allied, and in the line of the throne, instantly received publicly the investiture of the highest order of Otaheitan nobility, namely, a species of tattooing appropriated to chiefs alone. The limbs of the body thus distinguished, are traversed all over with a damasked sort of pattern, while the particular royal insignia is marked on the left side of the forehead, and below the eye, like a thick mass of dark tattooing.

But the young Frenchman, and his north Briton companion, had reserved to themselves means of increasing their consequence, still more than by their mere personal merits, with their new fellow-countrymen. A few days after the wreck, the subsiding elements had cast up certain articles of the ship, which they managed to turn to good account: the most valuable of them were fire-arms and some gunpowder, and a few other implements, both of defence, and use in household, or ship's repairs. The fire-arms seemed to endow the new young chief, just engrafted into the reigning stock, with a kind of preternatural authority; and, by the aid of his old messmate, and new bosom-coadjutor, he exerted all his influence over their awed minds, to prevent their recurrence to the frightful practice he had seen on his first landing, of devouring the prisoners they took in war. His marriage had invested him with the power of a natively born son of the king; and, having made himself master of their language, his persuasions were so conclusive with the leading warriors, that, in the course of a very little time, it was rare to hear that so dreadful a species of vengeance was ever tasted, even in stealth. However, so addicted were some few of the fiercer sort, to this ancient triumph of their ancestors, that he found it necessary to add commands to persuasions, and then threats to commands; and having expressed in the strongest terms his abhorrence of so cowardly and brutal a practice, he told them, that the first man he saw attempt to touch the flesh of a prisoner to devour it, he would instantly put the offender to death.

Shortly after this warning, a fray took place between the natives of his father-in-law's dominions, and their enemies from a hostile island. A number of captives were taken; and all under his command held his former orders in such reverence, that none, excepting two (and they had before shown refractory dispositions,) presumed to disobey his edict of mercy. But these men, in derision of his lenity, particularly to the female sex, selected a woman prisoner to be their victim; and slaying her, as they would have done a beast, they commenced their horrible repast upon her body. Laonce descried the scene at a distance just as they had prepared their hideous banquet, and, going resolutely towards them, levelled his musket at the cannibals. One of the wretches was killed with the horrid morsel in his mouth, and a second shot, brought down his voracious accomplice in the act. This bold example so awed all within ken of the fact, that from that hour, until the day he quitted the island, a period of fourteen years, no captive ever met with the interdicted fate. Though the old sovereign continued in life, he consigned the power to his new son, and Laonce became virtually king of the place. Indeed, so reconciled was he and his friend the north Briton (who also married) to the spot which had first sheltered them, and then adopted them even as its legitimate offspring, that although many ships of different nations touched there, no inducements could prevail on them to quit their sea-girt home of simple nature, for all the blandishments which civilized life could produce. Yet Laonce took a hospitable delight in showing every act of friendship in his power to the captains of the vessels; refitting them with food and fresh water; and rendering them much essential service, in pointing out how to manage with safety the difficult navigation round the several islands.

The animation with which he recited these circumstances, after he was far from the spot where they took place, strongly portrayed the fearless independence of his former life. He spoke with the decision of one whose commands had been unappealable, and all the barbarian chief lightened in his eyes. But when he recalled his home there, his family happiness, his countenance fell, his eyes clouded, and he spoke in half-stifled words. He described his palace-hut; his arms, his hunting spear, his canoe; his return to his hut, with the fruits of the chase; the graceful, delicate person of his wife; her clinging fondness on his entrance; his tenderness for her, and for his children—for she bore to him a son and a daughter; and, while he spoke, he burst into tears, and sobbed like a child. "I was then beloved," said he, "Honoured!—master of all around me; Now, I am nothing:—no home—no wife—no friend! I am an outcast here!—when there! Oh, Berea! wilt thou have forgotten me?" His tears, and wild agonies, prevented him proceeding; and my eyes could not remain dry, when seeing such genuine grief, such real suffering.

But the cause of his being separated from his South-Sea home, and his beloved Berea and her babes, remains to be told. It appears, that about three years before the period I met him, a Russian ship, sent on a voyage of discoveries, touched at the island where Laonce had become naturalized. The captain was received with royal hospitality by the king; and the Prince Laonce became the glad interpreter between the Europeans and his august father-in-law—for the captain spoke French. And, besides procuring the crew all they wanted for common comforts, the young chief loaded the commander and his officers with useful presents. One night it blew a violent gale, and the Russian captain, deeming it impossible to keep his anchorage in a bay so full of unseen dangers, made signals to the land, in hopes of exciting some native, experienced in the navigation, to come off, and direct him how to steer. Every moment increased his jeopardy; the storm augmented; and, at each growing blast, he expected to be torn from his cables, and dashed to atoms against the rocks. No one moved from the shore. Again the signals were repeated: Laonce had risen from his bed on hearing the first. Who was there amongst all in that island, excepting his British comrade, who would have known how to move a ship through those boiling waves? The light canoe, and a vessel of heavy burthen, were different objects! His comrade was then watching by the side of an almost dying wife, who had just made him the father of his first-born son. Could Laonce summon him from that spot of his heart's tenderest duties, to attend to the roaring guns of distress from a stranger vessel? Impossible! He rose, and looked out on the night. He listened to the second signal, he wrung his hands, and, sighing, was returning to his couch again. His wife had then risen also. She clasped her arms round him, and a big tear stood in both her eyes, "You tell me," said she, "that your people do not make those thunders to heaven, and to earth, till they are drowning. You know you can save them all. Go, Lao,"—and she smiled; "go; and the foreign chief, after you have saved him, will give you something for me—either a looking-glass, or a silk handkerchief. Go, Lao."

He wound his arms round the gentle pleader; and, almost ashamed that the father and the husband in his heart, should make him calculate between his own life and that of the gallant crew, he told her, that the tempest raged too tremendously for him to dare stemming it. But she laughingly repulsed his caresses, accusing his fondness for her as the inducement of his assumed apprehensions; and being too long accustomed to the rashness of her own people, in braving every weather, to believe any plea of positive danger, she still persisted; saying she must have a silk handkerchief that night from yon ship, or she should think he loved his sound sleep better than he did his fond Berea.

The enthusiastic love which still warmed the faithful husband's breast, and a third signal of distress from the struggling vessel, mastered his better judgment, and, seizing his canoe, he dashed into the foaming waves and boldly stemmed their fury to the object of his mission. The overjoyed crew, as they heard his voice hailing them through the storm, cast out a rope, by which they hoisted him into their cracking ship. The most rapturous acknowledgments from the captain, greeted him as soon as he jumped on the deck; and the eager seamen called him their deliverer. He was happy! he said, he was happy in the achievement of what he had done; he had obeyed the wish of his beloved Berea, and he had survived the lashing surge. He was happy, in the confidence that he should rescue the gallant vessel he came to take under his control. But that hour of happiness was his last. He took the helm in his hands; he gave the requisite directions to the seamen, for the management of the ship; and he soon steered her out of the dangers of the bay, till she rode in safety on the main ocean. He then asked for a boat to carry him on shore, for his canoe had been crushed by an accident. But the wind still blowing hurricanes, they would not venture the loss of one of their boats: and during the hot contentions between him, and the ungrateful chief of the vessel he had preserved, they were driven out far to sea; whence his swimming arm, had he plunged into the boisterous deep, could have been of no use to him. Indignation, despair, overwhelmed him. None appeared to understand the nature of his feelings; all pretending to wonder that a European born, should not be grateful to any occasion that would carry him away from a savage country like that. In vain Laonce remonstrated; in vain he talked of his wife and children; the captain and his sailors laughed, promised him better of both sorts among his kindred whites; and when he cursed their hardened hearts and cruel treachery, they laughed again, and left him to his misery. At last, when the protracted hurricane subsided, and the vessel's log-book proved that she had been driven several degrees leeward of the Society Isles, abandoned to a sullen despair, he ceased to accuse or to reproach; he ceased even to speak on any subject, but cast himself into his lonely berth during the day, that he might not be irritated to continued unavailing madness, by the sight of the ingrates who had betrayed him. To his straining eyes, nothing but the silvery line of the starlit sea was on that distant horizon; but his heart's vision pierced farther, and he beheld the sleepers in that home;—no, not the sleepers! His disconsolate, his despairing wife, tearing her bright locks, and beating the tender bosom he must no longer clasp to his own. His children—"Oh! my babes!" cried he, and the cry of a father's heart for once pierced the obdurate bosom of the captain, who, in that moment, had happened to come upon the deck to examine the night. To ease his Otaheitan benefactor, he declared he had thus carried him off, to share in the honour of his expected discoveries. The unhappy chief, in then answering him, begged, that if he had, indeed, any spark of honesty towards him, he would prove it, by obeying his wish in one thing at least; and that was, to set him on shore on the first European settlement they should fall in with. "Do this," said he, "and I may yet believe you have honour. For honour is a man's own act; a discovery is fortune's; and for its advantages, did I stay, I should not have to thank you. But I want none such. Set me on shore, and there I will follow my own destiny."