To the Gold Coast for Gold eBook

Mrs. Murray also declares that Captain Troubridge, when invested in the monastery by superior numbers, placed before his men a line of prisoners, and that these being persons of influence, the assailants fired high; moreover that Colonel M(onteverde?), the commander of the island troops, was an Italian who spoke bad Spanish, and kept shouting to his men, ‘Condanate vois a matar a la Santisima Trinitate!’ The officer sent to parley (Captain Hood) was, we are told, accompanied to the citadel by a gentleman named Murphy, whom the English had taken prisoner.  A panic (before mentioned) came from three militia officers, who, mounting a single animal, rode off to La Laguna, assuring the cabildo and the townspeople that Santa Cruz had fallen.  One of this ‘valiant triumvirate’ had succeeded to a large property on condition of never disgracing his name, and after the flight he had the grace to offer it to a younger brother who had distinguished himself in South America.  The junior told him not to be a fool, and the property was left to the proprietor’s children, ’his grandson being in possession of it at the present day.’

The chapter ends with the fate of one O’Rooney, a merchant’s clerk who cast his lot with the Spaniards, and whom General Gutierrez sent with an order to the commandant of Paso Alto Fort.  Being in liquor, he took the Marina, or shortest road; and, when questioned by the enemy, at once told his errand.  ‘In those days and in such circumstances,’ writes the lively lady, ’soldiers were very speedy in their decisions, and the marine who had challenged O’Rooney at once bayonetted him, while his comrade rifled his pockets and appropriated his clothes.’

Remains only to state that the colours of the unfortunate cutter Fox and her boats are still in the chapel of Sant’ Iago, on the left side of the Santa Cruz parish church, La Concepcion.  Planted against the wall flanking the cross, in long coffin-like cases with glass fronts, they have been the object of marked attention on the part of sundry British middies.  And the baser sort of town-folk never fail to show by their freedom, or rather impudence of face and deportment, that they have not forgotten the old story, and that they still glory in having repulsed the best sailor in Europe.

CHAPTER VIII.

TO GRAND CANARY—­LAS PALMAS, THE CAPITAL.

At noon (January 10) the British and African s.s. Senegal weighed for Grand Canary, which stood in unusually distinct relief to the east, and which, this time, was not moated by a tumbling sea.  Usually it is; moreover, it lies hidden by a bank of French-grey clouds, here and there sun-gilt and wind-bleached.  We saw the ‘Pike’ bury itself under the blue horizon, at first cloaked in its wintry ermines and then capped with fleecy white nimbus, which confused itself with the snows.