Part 2
Mr Dupuy, aghast with righteous anger and astonishment, could hardly believe his own ears at this unparalleled piece of nigger impertinence coming from so old a servant as Uncle ’Zekiel. He turned round upon his trusty butler slowly and solemnly, chair and all, and with his two hands planted firmly on his capacious knees, he said in his most awful voice: ‘’Zekiel, I’m quite at a loss to understand what you can mean by such conduct. Didn’t you hear me distinctly say to Miss Nora this very minute that the niggers don’t rise, won’t rise, can’t rise, and never have risen? How dare you, sir, how dare you contradict me to my very face in this disgraceful, unaccountable manner?’
But Uncle ’Zekiel, quite convinced in his own mind of the correctness of his own hasty inference, could only repeat, more and more energetically every minute: ‘It de trut’ I tellin’ you, sah; it de trut’ I tellin’ you. Naygur hab risen, runnin’ an’ shoutin’, kickin’ fire about, an’ burnin’ de trash-houses!’
Mr Dupuy rose from the table, pale but incredulous. Nora jumped up, white and terrified, but with a mute look of horror-struck appeal to Uncle ’Zekiel. ‘Doan’t you be afraid, missy,’ the old man whispered to her in a loud undertone; ‘we fight all de naygur in all Trinidad before we let dem hurt a single hair ob your sweet, pretty, white, little head, dearie.’
At that moment, for the first time, a loud shout burst suddenly upon their astonished ears, a mingled tumultuous yell of ‘Kill de buckra—kill de buckra!’ broken by deep African guttural mumblings, and the crackling noise of the wild flames among the dry cane-refuse. It was the shout that the negroes raised as Delgado called them back from the untimely fire to their proper work of bloodshed and massacre.
In her speechless terror, Nora flung herself upon her father’s arms, and gazed out upon the ever reddening glare beyond with unspeakable alarm.
Next minute, the cry from without rose again louder and louder: ‘Buckra country for us! Kill de buckra! Colour for colour! Kill dem—kill dem!’ And then, another deep negro voice, clearer and shriller far than all of them, broke the deathly stillness that succeeded for a second, with the perfectly audible and awful words: ‘Follow me! I gwine to lead you to kill de Dupuys an’ all de buckra!’
‘’Zekiel!’ Mr Dupuy said, coming to himself, and taking down his walking-stick with that calm unshaken courage in which the white West Indian has never been found lacking in the hour of danger—‘’Zekiel, come with me! I must go out at once and quell these rioters.’
Nora gazed at him in blank dismay. ‘Papa, papa!’ she cried breathlessly, ‘you’re not going out to them just with your stick, are you? You’re not going out alone to all these wretches without even so much as a gun or a pistol!’
‘My dear,’ Mr Dupuy answered, coolly and collectedly, disengaging himself from her arms not without some quiet natural tenderness, ‘don’t be alarmed. You don’t understand these people as well as I do. I’m a magistrate for the county: they’ll respect my position. The moment I come near, they’ll all disperse and grow as mild as babies.’
And even as he spoke, the confused shrieks of the women surged closer and closer upon their ears: ‘Kill dem—kill dem! De liquor—de liquor!’
‘Ah! I told you so,’ Mr Dupuy murmured, half to himself, very complacently, with a deep breath. ‘Only a foolish set of tipsy negresses, waking and rum-drinking, and kicking about firebrands.’
For another second, there was a slight pause again, while one might count twenty; and then the report of a pistol rang out clear and definite upon the startled air from the direction of the flaring trash-houses. It was Delgado’s pistol, shooting down the tipsy recalcitrant.
‘This means business!’ Mr Dupuy ejaculated, raising his voice, with a sidelong glance at poor trembling Nora.—‘Come along, ’Zekiel; come along all of you. We must go out at once and quiet them or disperse them.—Dick, Thomas, Emilius, Robert, Jo, Mark Antony! every one of you! come along with me, come along with me, and see to the trash-houses before these tipsy wretches have utterly destroyed them.’
(_To be continued._)
BEES AND HONEY.
The honey-bee has been an object of great interest from the very earliest ages; the most ancient historical records make frequent reference to it. ‘A little balm and a little honey’ formed part of the present which Jacob sent into Egypt to Joseph in the time of the great famine. The ‘busy bee’ figures also in Greek as well as Hebrew history. The little creature has given a name to many females of high degree. The Hebrew name of the bee (Deborah) was given to Rebecca’s nurse, as also to that magnanimous prophetess whose courage and patriotism inspired the flagging zeal and waning energies of her dispirited countrymen. The Greek name of the bee (Melissa) was given to one of the daughters of Melissus, king of Crete. It was she who, with her sister Amalthæa, is fabled to have fed Jupiter with the milk of goats. She is said, also, to have first discovered the means of collecting honey from the stores of the bees, from which some ancient writers inferred that she not only bore the name, but that she was actually changed into a bee.
Another Greek story tells of a woman of Corinth, also bearing the name of Melissa, who, having been admitted to officiate in the festivals of Ceres, the goddess of agriculture, afterwards refused to initiate others, and was torn to pieces for her disobedience, a swarm of bees being made to rise from her body.
The old Greek name for the bee seems to have fallen into disuse in this country as a name given to females, though there can be no reason why its use should not be revived, for it is at least as melodious as the Hebrew name of the same significance, still applied to many a matron and maiden—a name which is expressive of honeyed sweetness, as also of unwearied energy and untiring industry.
Those who have had personal knowledge and experience of bee-culture will bear out the remark that bees are not particular as to the size or the position of the home in which they choose to dwell, so that it suffices for them to carry on with security their wonderful operations. In their wild state, cavities of rocks and hollow trees are alike available; and in their domestic conditions they have no preference for a straw skep over a wooden box, nor for the wooden house over the straw castle.
The bee, which, while under proper control and management, is one of man’s best friends, proves, when assailed by him in any way, a terrible adversary. Allusion is made to this by Moses in his story of what befell the Israelites in their wilderness sojourn: ‘The Amorites came out against you, and chased you as bees do, and destroyed you.’ The strength and force of their sting is such as to enable them to pierce the skin of the horse and other large animals and kill them. Their ordinary speed when in flight, is from sixty to eighty miles an hour, and they have been known to fly past the windows of an express train when travelling at full speed in the same direction. Their manner of attack is to dash straight at the object aimed at; and commonly, when excited by the presence of some unknown spectator, and especially by the intermeddling of some undexterous or mischievous person, they will attack the face, aiming especially at the eyes. When, therefore, the thousands which inhabit a single hive are aroused by the sound of alarm, well understood by all the inmates, to repel an invader, they sally forth with a courage and determination which none can withstand, attacking their foes on every side with a fury it is impossible to resist. King David must have witnessed just such a scene, which he reproduces in his description of the fierce attacks, the determined onslaughts of his bitter and unrelenting foes: ‘All nations compassed me about ... they compassed me about like bees.’
Somewhat recently, the mishap of a porter in handling a box of bees in transit by railway created an amusing and rather alarming scene at the station. There was a general stampede of passengers and officials flying in every direction, chased by the infuriated bees. It was only when some one, skilled in the management of bees, catching the queen and placing her in the box, restored confidence and quiet, for, flocking loyally to her standard, the whole colony returned to the case, which was in due time forwarded to its destination. But even this was a small affair compared with what is related in ancient history of persons being driven from their habitations, and the inhabitants of an entire town being compelled to flee before myriads of bees. Ælianus, who flourished about 200 A.D., gives an instance of this in one of his seventeen books on animals. Mungo Park, too, the African traveller, mentions a modern instance which took place near Dooproo: ‘We had no sooner unloaded the asses than some of the people, being in search of honey, inopportunely disturbed a large swarm of bees. They came out in immense numbers, and attacked men and beasts at the same time. Luckily, most of the asses were loose, and galloped up the valley; but the horses and people were very much stung, and obliged to scamper off in all directions. In fact, for half an hour the bees seemed to have put an end to our journey. In the evening, when they became less troublesome and we could venture to collect our cattle, we found many of them much stung and swelled about the head. Three asses were missing; one died in the evening, and another next morning. Our guide lost his horse, and many of the people were much stung about the head and face.’
The fierceness and unrelenting cruelty of the ancient Assyrians, and the terror with which their swarming multitudes filled the inhabitants of the lands they invaded, have caused them to be likened to bees in their much-dreaded attacks on such as have aroused their anger: ‘And it shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall _hiss_ for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria. And they shall come, and shall rest all of them in the desolate valleys, and in the holes of the rocks, and upon all thorns, and upon all bushes.’ The ‘hiss’ was simply a call, in allusion to the note of the queen bee, as she issues her royal mandate to her ever loyal subjects to prepare for action. It has also been supposed to allude to a custom prevailing in very ancient times in connection with bee-culture, or honey-raising in the neighbourhood of rivers. During the dry season, a number of hives would be placed on a flat-bottomed boat, in the charge of an attendant. Very early in the morning the boat would begin the day’s voyage, gently gliding down the river, the bees sallying forth with the sun to collect their golden stores and deposit them in their several hives, which they commonly know by some mark. The innumerable flowers on the banks of the rivers offered them a fine harvest-field. At the approach of evening, the well-known whistle or ‘hiss’ of the care-taker—a decent imitation of the queen’s own call—would bring them back to their hives in multitudes, when the boat would be paddled back to the farm or other place of rendezvous.
As an article of food, and as a much-valued and even royal luxury, honey has been used from the remotest ages. Nor was it much, if any, less in request as a healing medicine for both inward and outward application. And though it may have fallen somewhat into disuse in these days, when many good things are overlooked, and when the artificial too often supplants the real, it may be safely predicted that the wide and rapid spread of bee-culture will induce a return to some of the wiser uses and methods and forms of adaptation employed by our early forefathers, as well as stimulate to new applications and new developments of its wondrous powers.
When and by whom mead or metheglin was first made from honey, could not be easily determined. The two words are not unfrequently applied to the same liquor; but that is not correct, as they are dissimilar. Both, however, are made from honey, sometimes also from the refuse or washings of the comb. Queen Elizabeth had such fondness for metheglin as to prescribe carefully how it should be made and with what a variety of herbs it should be flavoured. In Wales, it long continued to be held in high esteem; and its various beneficial properties have been quaintly set forth in a letter addressed to Cliffe the historian by the learned Welshman, Rev. James Howells (born 1594), brother of Thomas Howells, some time Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. The uniqueness of the communication is the apology for its quotation in full:
SIR—To inaugurate a new and jovial new year unto you, I send you a morning’s draught [namely, a bottle of metheglin]. Neither Sir John Barleycorn nor Bacchus hath anything to do with it; but it is the pure juice of the bee, the laborious bee, and king of insects. The Druids and old British bards were wont to take a carouse hereof before they entered into their speculations; and if you do so when your fancy labours with anything, it will do you no hurt; and I know your fancy to be very good. But this drink always carries a kind of state with it, for it must be attended with a brown toast; nor will it admit of but one good draught, and that in the morning; if more, it will keep a-humming in the head, and so speak much of the house it came from, I mean the hive, as I gave a caution elsewhere; and because the bottle might make more haste, have made it go upon these (poetic) feet:
_J. H. T. C. Salutem et Annum Platonicum._
The juice of bees, not Bacchus, here behold, Which British bards were wont to quaff of old; The berries of the grape with furies swell, But in the honeycomb the graces dwell.
This alludes to a saying which the Turks have, that there lurks a devil in every berry of the vine. So I wish you cordially as to me an auspicious and joyful new year, because you know I am, &c.
Metheglin is no doubt a healthy beverage, containing an admixture of milk. Pallus Romulus, when he was a hundred years old, told Julius Cæsar that he had preserved the vigour of his mind and body by taking metheglin inwardly, and using oil outwardly. Metheglin and mead may be made very strong, and, of course, they both contain some amount of alcohol. In Virgil’s days, metheglin was used to qualify wine when harsh. He writes of
Huge heavy honeycombs, of golden juice, Not only sweet, but pure, and fit for use; To allay the strength and hardness of the wine, And with old Bacchus new metheglin join.
Mead or metheglin was the nectar of the Scandinavian nations, which they expected to drink in heaven, using the skulls of their enemies as goblets. Thus we read in Penrose’s _Carousal of Odin_:
Fill the honeyed beverage high; Fill the skulls, ’tis Odin’s cry! Heard ye not the powerful call, Thundering through the vaulted hall? Fill the meathe, and spread the board, Vassals of the grisly lord!— The feast begins, the skull goes round, Laughter shouts—the shouts resound.
In England at the present time, mead, like many other old and excellent domestic compounds, has passed almost entirely out of use. In very few houses could it now be found. Here and there in a farmhouse where old customs linger, it may still be had; and it is still used for colds and other complaints, both in the case of men and cattle.
The revival of bee-keeping and the conduct of the enterprise on scientific principles, will restore honey to its wonted place in the domestic economy; and if carefully studied and thriftily managed, the cultivation of bees and the product of honey may be made to form not only an important article of food and a considerable item of domestic revenue, but an ample source of amusement, and a means of recreation healthful alike to body and mind.
A GALLANT RESCUE.
Some six years ago I was staying in a little village about half a mile from the sea, on the south-east coast of Cornwall. I had just recovered from a severe attack of blood-poisoning, and had not yet entirely regained my strength. My two companions were Herbert B——, a medical student, and Sam W——, a midshipman in the royal navy, both of whom had lived the best part of their lives at the seaside, and had been accustomed from their boyhood to boating and yachting in all sorts of weather. The former, about six feet in height, was a paragon of herculean strength. The latter, four inches less, was slightly but firmly built, and in his eyes there was a look of boldness and audacity which was unmistakable, whilst his every action gave evidence of a catlike activity.
That part of the Cornish coast on which we were staying was bare and rocky; a long line of cliffs rearing themselves straight out of the water to a height of about two hundred feet, stretched half-a-dozen miles on either side of us, affording no shelter for boats of a large size. The only thing resembling a haven was a small bay about a mile from our cottage, running a hundred and fifty yards inland, and facing south-south-east. From each side of this bay a bold reef of rocks jutted straight out to sea for about seventy yards, acting as natural breakwaters, and preventing a surf in the bay even in the roughest weather. In this bay, which was very dangerous of approach to those who did not know the landmarks, we kept a fishing-boat, about twenty feet long by six feet and a half beam; long and somewhat narrow, being lightly built, and meant for rowing as well as sailing.
I was sitting alone in the dining-room of our cottage about eleven o’clock on the morning of October 25, 1879. The wind, which had been blowing fresh for the past three days, had increased during the night to a strong gale from the south-west, and my two friends had gone out about an hour before to watch the very rough sea, and to see if there were any ships or boats in distress. I felt rather unwell, and was congratulating myself on not having gone out in such weather, when I heard a quick step outside the door, and Herbert burst in, crying in a decided manner: ‘There’s a dismasted schooner drifting up channel, broadside on to the sea; there’s a heavy squall of rain over Looe [the nearest port, about eight miles off], and the life-boat people can’t see her; so Sam and I are going off to her in the fishing-boat; and as none of the villagers will come to steer, I’ve come to fetch you.’
‘Fetch me!’ I ejaculated, horror-struck. ‘But my illness’——
‘Put your illness in your pocket, and keep it there till you come back,’ said my friend. ‘You _must_ come—unless you’re afraid,’ he added, glaring at me.
Although of a weak and nervous temperament, I am by no means a coward; so I told him I was ready to accompany him. On our way to the bay, Herbert told me that when first seen, the schooner was dismasted, but that the crew had managed to keep steerage-way on her by hoisting the jib and letting her run before the gale: the canvas being rotten, however, as is often the case on board small traders, the sail had blown right out of the bolt-ropes, and the vessel had swung round broadside on to the sea.
On reaching the cliff, a thrilling sight met my gaze. Some four miles off, a square-topsail schooner of not more than two hundred tons was being tossed about at the mercy of the waves. Her mainmast had gone by the board, and her fore-topmast had snapped off a few feet above the cap; her foreyard, however, still remained. She had a tremendous list to port—which was also her lee-side—and every sea that struck her broke clean over her, and seemed to shake her fearfully. We did not stop half a minute to observe this, but hurried to the bay where our boat was beached. Sam was preparing her for sea with all speed, but as coolly as if he were going out with a water-party on the upper reaches of the Thames.
After taking out some of the ballast to lighten her for the heavy pull—we could not sail, for wind and sea were dead against us—the boat was launched. No sooner had we got beyond the points of the two natural breakwaters, than a sea with what sailors call a ‘head’ on it struck us on the starboard bow, sending the boat’s head flying round and filling her quarter-full of water.
‘Gracious powers!’ I cried, ‘we’ll never get out there. And if we do, we’ll never get back safely with the boat full of people.’
‘Pull her head round to the sea, Sam, my boy.—Mind your helm, Arthur, and don’t talk,’ said Herbert calmly. ‘And as soon as we get beyond the rocks, you can start baling,’ he added, as we again met the first wave outside the bay. But this time I was prepared, and grasping the helm firmly, kept the boat’s head dead on to the sea. With one vigorous stroke of the oars, which Herbert and Sam handled in a masterly style, we dashed over, almost through, the huge billow that threatened to ingulf us, and not a moment too soon, for a second after it passed under our stern, it broke with a roar like the report of a cannon.
Then began a tremendous battle against wind and sea; Herbert dragging his oar through the water with that apparent ease and grace peculiar to men endowed with enormous muscular power; whilst Sam, who was pulling bow-oar, strained his sinewy arms and lithe body till, by their united efforts, the spray flew over the boat’s bow as she boldly dashed over, often through, the waves. We were wet to the skin; and it was with great difficulty that I could keep the boat’s head straight.