George Sala - The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. Volume 2

She was by right and title, then, Mistress Handsell, with the Christian name of Sarah; but among the coloured people of Kingston she went by the name of Maum Buckey, and, among her more immediate intimates, as "Yaller Sally." And, although she passed for being very Wealthy, I declare that she was nothing but a Washerwoman. This Washing Trade of hers, however, which she carried on for the King and Merchants' ships that were in Harbour, and for nearly all the rich Merchants and Traders of Kingston, brought Maum Buckey in a very pretty penny; and not only was her tub commerce a brisk ready-money business, but she had two flourishing plantations – one for the growing of Coffee, and the other of Sugar – near the town of Savannah de la Mar. Moreover, she had a distillery of Rum and Arrack in Kingston itself, and everybody agreed that she must be very well to do in the world. She was an immensely fat old Mulotter woman, on the wrong side of Fifty when I knew her, and her Mother had been a slave that had been the Favourite Housekeeper to the English Governor, who, dying, left her her Freedom, and enough Money to carry on that Trade of cleansing clothes which her Daughter afterwards made so profitable.

Maum Buckey and I soon became very good friends. She was proud of her relationship with a white Englishman – "a right go-down Buckra" as she called him – who commanded a ship, and besides recommended her to other gentlemen in his way for a Washerwoman; and although she took care to inform me, before we had been twenty-four hours acquainted, that her Husband, Sam Handsell, has been a sad Rascal, who would have drunk all her Money away, had he not Timeously drunk himself to death, she made me the friendliest welcome, and promised that she would do all she could for me, "the little piccaninny buckra," who was set down by Mr. Handsell as being the son of an old Shipmate of his that had met with misfortunes. After 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.