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CHAPTER III.
KICK 'EM JINNY
I FIRMLY believe that it was my lucky bug that did the
trick, although under ordinary circumstances I would not
carry a tarantula for a mascot. It was on my last night
at Île-de-Caille, and as I crawled up through the
hatch of my upper story abode, something black stood out
in the candle flicker against the wall. Before I knew
what it was, instinct told me that it was something to
look out for and then I noticed the huge hairy legs that
proclaimed the tarantula. Of course, I could not have him
running around as he pleased so I took the under half of
a sixteen gauge cartridge box and covered him before he
had time to think of jumping. The box, which measured
four and a half inches square, was not too large for I
nipped his toes as I pressed the pasteboard against the
wall. Then I slid a sheet of paper between him and the
wall. It was no trick at all to superimpose the upper
half of the pasteboard box, slip out the paper and push
the cover down. He was mine. And a good mascot he proved
to be although I gave him a rough time of it in the
jumble of sea off Kick 'em Jinny.
Kick 'em Jinny is the sea-mule of the Grenadines. In a
prosaic way the cartographer has marked it "Diamond
Rock," and then, as if ashamed of himself, has put the
real name in small letters underneath. So "steep-to" that
a vessel would strike her bowsprit on its sides before
her keel touched bottom, Kick 'em Jinny rises from a
diameter of a quarter of a mile to a height of nearly
seven hundred feet. Cactus-grown, with no natural
resources, one would scarcely expect to find on it any
animal life other than a few sea fowl. Yet, besides
myriads of screaming gulls, boobies, pelicans and wild
pigeons, here are goats, the wild descendants of those
left by the Spanish pirates, who used to plant them as a
reserve food supply that would take care of itself.
The rock lies a third of a mile to the northward of
Isle de Ronde, with the jagged Les Tantes a scant two
miles to the eastward. With the trades blowing fresh from
the northeast the lee tide runs through the passage
between Isle de Ronde and Les Tantes at a rate of three
knots an hour, whirling past Kick 'em Jinny in a
northwesterly direction -- at right angles to the wind
and sea. The weather tide in returning runs in almost the
opposite direction at the rate of a knot and a half. It
must be remembered that the constant northeasterly winds
move a surface current of water toward the southwest so
that this confluence of wind and current makes a tide rip
on the weather side of Kick 'em Jinny, from which its
name is derived.
Now you may ask, as I did when I discussed the matter
with my friends of St. George's over tall, cool glasses
of lime squash -- Why not sail under the lee of Kick 'em
Jinny? If I sailed under the lee of the rock I should
lose much valuable ground to windward while if I fought
it out along the back or weather side of Ronde and Kick
'em Jinny and then made a port tack to Les Tantes I
should be in the best possible position for my jump to
Carriacou. That point settled, it was a question of
tides. With the lee tide running to the north-north-west
I might not be able to clear the rocky windward shore on
my starboard tack, and it would be very difficult to claw
off on the port tack, the latter being to eastward and
away from shore.
With the weather tide, however, I could work my way
off shore in case of necessity, but I should be fighting
the current as I advanced on the starboard tack. With the
weather tide I should encounter the rougher sea, and it
was here that the Yakaboo would meet her pons asinorum,
to carry out the idea of the sea-mule.
Many bets had been offered and some had been taken at
St. George's that I would not reach Carriacou, which
implied that the cruise would come to an end off Kick 'em
Jinny. But I put my faith in one -- my Man Friday, who
had instructed me in the mysteries of "de lee an' wedder
toid," and he had shown me how to watch the weather in
regard to the changes of the moon. During my stay on
Île-de-Caille, I watched the quarters come and go
and kept track of the moon in order to note the changing
of the tides. I finally selected a day when the second
quarter had promised steady winds, with the weather tide
beginning to run at nine o'clock in the morning. If there
should be any doubt as to the weather for that day, that
doubt would be settled by the time the weather tide had
started. With everything as much in my favor as possible
I would make the attempt.
I slept that morning till the sun had climbed well up
the back of Caille, for when I awoke the warm day breezes
were filtering over me through the mosquito bar. I must
have eaten breakfast, but later in the day I was puzzled
to remember whether I had or not. My mind was not in the
present, nor anywhere near my earthly body -- it was
living in the next few hours and hovering over that
stretch of water to the eastward of Kick 'em Jinny. Bynoe
and his crew were also going to sail northward to
Cannouan in the Baltimore, and I remember standing among
the rocks of the whale cove bidding good-bye to the rest
of the people. The few shillings I gave them seemed a
princely gift and tears of gratitude streamed down the
black shiny face of the cook when I presented her with a
bottle of rheumatism cure.
The tide would turn at seven minutes after the hour
and three minutes later the Yakaboo was in the water. By
the feel of her as she bobbed in the heave of the sea I
knew that the fight was on. With long rhythmic strokes
the whaleboat swung out of the cove, the canoe moving
easily alongside like a remora. Cautiously we rowed
around the north end of Caille, seeking the currentless
waters close to shore. When we reached the windward side
of the island we made sail. It did not take many minutes
to see that the canoe would be left alone in her fight
with Kick 'em Jinny for the whaleboat, with her ballast
of "rock-stone" and her twelve hundred pounds of live
weight to steady her, caught the wind high above the seas
with her tall rig and worried her way through the jumble
in a way that made me forget, in a moment of admiration,
my own sailing.
But I had other business than that of watching the
whaleboat. As I hauled in the sheet to lay the canoe on
the starboard tack, a sea seemed to come from nowhere and
with scant invitation dropped aboard and filled the
cockpit. It was like starting up a sleeping horse with an
inconsiderate whip lash. The Yakaboo shook herself and
gathered herself for that first essay of windward work.
Try as she would, she could find no ease in the nasty,
steep sea, and instead of working well along the shore of
Ronde in the wake of the whaleboat, she barely crossed
the channel from Caille and fetched up at the southern
tip of the island.
On the port tack to sea she did better, although the
weather tide running abeam carried us back off Caille. We
made perhaps a mile to the eastward and then I decided to
try the starboard tack again. The canoe did still better
this time -- for a while -- and then we found ourselves
in the toils of Kick 'em Jinny. The tide was now running
with full force directly against us and at right angles
to the wind. There seemed to be no lateral motion to the
seas, they rose and fell as though countless imps were
pushing up the surface from below in delirious random.
One moment the canoe would be poised on the top of a
miniature water column to be dropped the next in a
hollow, walled about on all sides by masses of
translucent green and blue over which I could see nothing
but sky. The stiff wind might not have been blowing at
all, it seemed, for the sails were constantly ashake,
while the centerboard rattled in its casing like the
clapper of a bell. It was not sailing -- it was riding a
bronco at sea.
Bynoe, who was carrying my extra food supply in the
whaleboat, was now making frantic motions for me to turn
back. I had already decided, however, that the canoe
would worry her way through and I motioned to the whalers
to come alongside. With the two boats rising and falling
beside one another, as though on some foreshortened
see-saw, the stuff was transferred from the whaleboat to
the canoe. As the whaleboat rose over me the men dropped
my bags into the cockpit with an accuracy and ease of aim
acquired from years of life in just such jumping water as
this. The canoe sailor must at times not only be
ambidextrous, but must also use feet and teeth ; in
fact, he must be an all around marine acrobat. What
wonders we could perform had we but retained the
prehensile tail of our animal ancestors! So with the
mainsheet in my teeth and my legs braced in the cockpit,
I caught the bags with one hand and with the other stowed
them in the forward end of the well under the deck. A
large tin of sea biscuit, a cubical piece of
eight-cornered wickedness, which would neither stow under
deck nor pass through the hatches, required two hands for
catching and stowing and a spare line to lash it in place
just forward of my blanket bag. Then they screamed
"Good-bye" at me across the waves, while I yelled
"Yakaboo," and we parted company. Of that row of six
black faces, two I shall never see again for they have
since been lost in the very waters where we said
"Good-bye."
Taking quick cross-bearings by eye I could detect from
time to time changes in the position of the canoe and I
knew that there was some advance to the northward.
Finally we were so close to Kick 'em Jinny that I could
see the chamois-like goats stuck on its sides like
blotched rocks. All progress seemed to cease and for
three-quarters of an hour I could detect no change of
position. No stage racehorse ever made a gamer fight than
did the Yakaboo against her ocean treadmill. The
whaleboat was now a vanishing speck to the northward like
a fixed whitecap. I began to wonder whether I should
stick in this position till the coming of the lee tide. I
remember contemplating a small strip of beach on Les
Tantes where, in a pinch, I might land through the
breast-high surf with enough food to last till the
whalers might see some sign that I could put up on the
rocks.
Suddenly a blinding flash brought my attention from
Les Tantes to my cockpit. It was the tin of sea biscuit.
The water sloshing in the cockpit had softened the glue
of the paper covering. Finally, an extra large wave, a
grandfather, swept the paper entirely off, leaving the
shiny tin exposed to the brilliant sun. With a sweep I
cut the line, and the next instant I was mourning the
loss of a week's supply of sea biscuit.
The forward compartment now proved to be leaking,
through the deck as I discovered later, at just the time,
when, if the canoe had any soul at all, she would keep
tight for my sake. I shifted my outfit as far aft as
possible and sponged the water out by the cupful with one
hand ready to slam down the hatch in advance of a
boarding sea. It was done -- somehow -- and as a reward I
found the canoe was working her way into easier seas.
Then she began to sail and I realized that Kick 'em Jinny
was a thing of the past. I lay-to off Les Tantes, having
traveled three miles in two hours. We had not conquered
Kick 'em Jinny, we had merely slipped by her in one of
her lighter moods. But the canoe had stood the test and
by this I knew that she would carry me through the rest
of the channel to Saint Vincent. What her story would be
for the larger openings of from twenty-five to nearly
forty miles yet remained to be seen.
With her heels clear of Kick 'em Jinny the Yakaboo
traveled easily in the freer waters and before the tide
could draw me out into the Caribbean I was well under the
lee of Carriacou. Another half hour and I should have had
to fight for six hours till the next weather tide would
help me back to land.
Late in the afternoon, I stepped out of the canoe on
the uninhabited island of Mabouya, which lies off
Carriacou. The beach where I landed was typical of the
few low-lying cays of the Grenadines. The sand strip,
backed by a cheval de frise of cactus, curved
crescentlike, the horns running into sharp, rocky points
which confined the beach. The only break in the cactus
was a clump of the dreaded manchioneel trees and here I
decided to pitch my tent.
Barbot, in relating the second voyage of Columbus,
says : "On the shore grow abundance of mansanilla
trees, not tall, but the wood of them fine, the leaves
like those of the pear tree, the fruit a sort of small
apples, whence the Spaniards gave them the name ; of
so fine a color and pleasant a scent, as will easily
invite such as are unacquainted to eat them ; but
containing a mortal poison, against which no antidote has
any force. The very leaf of it causes an ulcer, where it
touches the flesh, and the dew on it frets off the
skin ; nay the very shadow of the tree is
pernicious, and will cause a man to swell, if he sleeps
under it." I thought I would take a chance -- perhaps the
manchioneel had become softer and more civilized since
the time of Columbus.
If there were any joy in the feeling of relief as I
walked up that lonely beach, I knew it not. Tired as I
was, I could only think of the hard work that I had to do
before I could lie down to rest. The Yakaboo had been
leaking steadily all day long and she now lay where I had
left her in a foot of water, with my whole outfit except
my camera submerged. This did not mean that everything
was wet, for my own muslin bags, honestly oiled and
dried, would keep their contents dry, but there was the
canoe to unload, bail out and drag ashore. There was
firewood to collect before dark, and I should have to
work sharp before sundown, for there were also the tent
to pitch, the supper to cook, and the log to write.
For a moment I stopped to look at the glorious sun
racing to cool himself in the Caribbean, and I gave
thanks for a strong body and a hopeful heart. In two
hours I was sitting under the peak of my tent on my
blanket roll, watching my supper boil in a little pail
over a lively fire of hard charcoals. The Yakaboo, bailed
out, high and dry on the beach, skulked in the darkness
as though ashamed to come near the fire.
It is always easy to say "in two hours I was doing so
and so," but to the man who lives out of doors and is
constantly using his wits to overcome the little
obstacles of nature those "two hours" are often very
interesting. As a rule, one is tired from the day's work
and if accidents are going to happen they are apt to
happen at just this time. The early stages of fatigue
bring on carelessness, and to the experienced man the
advanced stages of fatigue call for extreme caution.
Before unloading the canoe, I should have decided just
where I would place my tent and then I should have
beached the canoe immediately below the tent if possible.
As it was, the Yakaboo was sixty yards down the beach and
upon returning from one of my trips to her I found that a
spark from the fire had ignited my oiled dish bag which
was burning with a fierce heat. This had started the bag
next to it which contained my ammunition. With one leap I
landed on the precious high-power cartridges and began to
roll over and over in the sand with the burning bag in my
arms. What would have happened had one of my
nine-millimeter shells exploded? I had been careless in
arranging my outfit upon the sands when I built the
fire.
Troubles never come singly -- neither do they travel
in pairs -- they flock. I remember the difficulty I had
in starting the fire. The tin in which I carried my
matches was absolutely watertight -- I have proved that
since by submerging it in a bucket of water for two days
and nights. And yet when I came to open the tin I found
that the tips of the matches were deliquescent. It was my
first experience in tropical cruising and I had not
learned that the heat of the sun could draw the moisture
out of the wood of the matches, condense this moisture on
the inside of the tin, and melt the tips. I found some
safety matches tucked away in the middle of my clothes
bags and they were dry. This became my method of carrying
matches in the future. The natives carry matches in a
bamboo joint with a cork for a stopper.
And now that I have taken you into my first camp in
the islands I shall tell you briefly of the various parts
of my outfit as it was finally shaken down for the
cruise.
My tent was of the pyramidal form invented by
Comstock, seven feet high with a base seven feet square
and having the peak directly over the center of the
forward edge. In back was a two foot wall. It was made of
a waterproof mixture of silk and cotton, tinted green,
and weighed eight pounds. My mainmast served as a tent
pole, and for holding down I used seventeen pegs made of
the native cedar, which is a tough, hard wood and not
heavy. For my purposes I have found this the most
satisfactory tent for varied cruising, as I could use it
equally well ashore or rigged over the cockpit of the
Yakaboo when I slept aboard. Let me here offer a little
prayer of thanks to Comstock. You will find some
"improvement" upon his idea in almost any outfitter's
catalogue and given any name but his -- one might as well
try to improve it as to alter a Crosby
cat.
![](artfengler/faf_tent.gif)
My Comstock tent.
For sleeping I had two single German blankets,
weighing four pounds each. In place of the usual rubber
blanket, I used an oiled muslin ground cloth. My blankets
were folded in the ground cloth in such a manner that
upon drawing them from the blanket bag, I could roll them
out on the ground ready for turning in. The blanket bag
was made of heavy oiled canvas with the end turned in and
strapped so that even when it lay in a cockpit half full
of water its contents would still remain dry. One blanket
used with pajamas of light duck would have been ample, so
far as warmth goes, but for sleeping in the cockpit the
second blanket served as a padding for the hard
floor.
As for clothes, I started out with a heterogeneous
collection of old trousers, shirts and socks, which,
according to the law of the survival of favorites,
petered out to two pairs of light woolen trousers, two
light flannel shirts, and two pairs of thin woolen socks.
I indulged myself in half a dozen new sleeveless cotton
running shirts, dyed red, B.V.D.'s to correspond, and a
dozen red cotton bandana handkerchiefs. For footgear, I
carried a pair of heavy oiled tan shoes and pigskin
moccasins. A light Swedish dog-skin coat and a brown felt
hat with a fairly wide brim, completed my wardrobe.
For cooking I had the "Ouinnetka" kit, of my own
design, consisting of three pails, a frypan, two covers,
a cup, and two spoons, all of aluminum, which nested and
held a dish cloth and soap. There were no handles, a pair
of light tongs serving in their stead. This kit, which
was designed for two-man use, weighed a trifle under
three pounds.
The rest of my working outfit consisted of a two pound
axe, a canoe knife, a small aluminum folding candle
lantern, two one-gallon water cans, and a ditty bag,
containing a sight compass, parallel rule, dividers,
hypodermic outfit, beeswax, and the usual odds and ends
which one carries. For sailing I used a two-inch liquid
compass. This working outfit totaled forty-three pounds.
Had the "butterfly" continued in service, its weight
would have added a pound and a half.
![](artfengler/faf_camp.jpg)
My camp at Mabouya.
My food at the outset brought this weight up to eighty
pounds, but as I later on got down to chocolate,
erbswurst and the native foods, there was a reduction of
from twenty to thirty pounds.
The heaviest single unit of my whole outfit was a
quarter-plate Graflex, which, with its developing tank
and six tins of films, added twenty-six pounds. A nine
millimeter Mannlicher, .22 B.S.A., 38-40 Colt, a deep sea
rod and reel, shells, and tackle brought the total up to
120 pounds. I might as well have left out my armament and
tackle for when cruising I find little time for shooting
or fishing -- I would rather travel.
My charts, twelve in number, had first been trimmed to
their smallest working size and then cut into eight-inch
by ten-inch panels and mounted on muslin with half an
inch separating the edges so that they could be folded to
show uppermost whatever panel I happened to be sailing
on. The charts with my portfolio I kept in a double bag
in the aft end of the cockpit.
The various parts of my outfit were in bags having
long necks which could be doubled over and securely tied.
These were made of unbleached muslin, oiled with a
mixture of raw and boiled linseed oil and turpentine.
After a wet bit of sailing, when the canoe had at times
literally gone through the seas and there was water in
every compartment, it was a great comfort to find the
entire outfit quite dry.
The weight of the Yakaboo, with her rig and outfit
aboard, varied from 260 to 290 pounds -- not much more
than that of an ordinary rowboat.
![](artfengler/faf_yakaboo_beach.jpg)
Loaded and ready to get off.
Nothing is so unalloyed as the joy of pottering over a
hot, little fire when the stomach cries out and the body
tingles with the healthy fatigue of work in the open. My
spirit was at ease, for the canoe had proven herself and
even if she did leak, I was getting used to that -- as
one becomes used to a boil on the neck. To lie on my
blankets -- no bed was ever so welcome -- and to eat and
watch the last light fade from the hills of Carriacou
made me glad that I had been put on this earth to live.
After supper the companionable purr of my faithful pipe
made just the conversation to suit my mood. The night was
soft and balmy, and as I lay and watched the brilliant
constellations of the tropical night the lap-lap of the
water on the smooth sand lulled me off to sleep.
CHAPTER IV.
CARRIACOU-MAYERO-BEQUIA.
THE next moment I was sitting up, blinking into the
fiery face of the sun that had slipped around the earth
and was bobbing up again in the east.
It was not the sandy beach, the blue stretch of
wind-livened water nor the picturesque hills of
Carriacou, rising up before me, that alone brought
happiness, for, as my eye wandered down the beach, I saw
the buoyant, jaunty Yakaboo, and there came over me the
happy satisfaction that the cruise was mine. My eye
beheld her with the fondness of a parent for its child --
if only she did not leak.
Not until I had cooked and eaten breakfast and was
stowing my outfit into the canoe did I think of the
mascot I had brought with me from Caille. I found his
house in the forward end of the cockpit, unglued by the
wash of the day before and empty. I am not sentimental by
nature and I did not mourn his black hairy little body,
which no doubt, by this time, was being carried far out
into the Caribbean. I did thank him, or rather her, for I
found out afterwards that it was a female, for the
service she had rendered as a mascot in my sail around
Kick 'em Jinny. I did not know, in fact, that she was
still with the ship and would be my mascot for some time
to come.
When I ran alongside the jetty of the pretty little
town of Hillsboro, on the shores of Carriacou, a
blue-jacketed sailor pointed to where I might beach the
canoe, and said, "Mr. Smith is expecting you in his
office," a prosaic remark, more fitting to the tenth
floor above Broadway than to the beach of a West Indian
island. I had scarcely beached the canoe and was walking
across the hot stretch, curling my toes under me to ease
my soles on the blistering sands, when Mr. Smith met me,
a tall, spare figure, accentuated in its leanness by the
bulky helmet of the tropics. I liked him instantly. He
was a man of about fifty, strong, energetic and young for
his age. There was a bit of a brogue in his speech -- he
was an Irishman -- with a university training and
cultured as such men usually are, but still with an
Irishman's fondness for the world. Perhaps my liking was
part of a mutual feeling for he immediately asked me to
spend a few days with him at Top Hill. A cozy berth was
found for the Yakaboo in a boatshed near by, built, for
the sake of coolness, like the cotton ginnery of St.
George's, with open sides.
Carriacou might be called the Utopia of the
Grenadines. It is here that the work of one man stands
out and is not lost. Officially Whitfield Smith is known
as the Commissioner,* in reality he is a potentate, while
among his people he is known as "Papa."
* Whitfield Smith has been
Commissioner at Grand Turk since 1915.
Paternal is the rule of this man, which, after all, is
the way all governing should be done. And still with his
paternal feeling and his kindness, there is no
undermining familiarity. Justice, one feels, holds out
her delicately balanced scales and there is no chance for
her eye to pierce the blindfold. As in all the West
Indies, there is very little crime, petty theft and small
squabbles being the principal offenses. Swearing is a
punishable offense and one hears but little profanity.
The detection of crime is no disgrace and one does not
lose caste upon being haled into court. Let the prisoner
be convicted and imprisoned and he is forever
disgraced.
The curse of the black man is laziness and the curse
of the islands is the ease with which life may be
sustained. To these may be added a warped idea regarding
the tilling of the soil. There is deep rooted from the
times of the old planters the West Indian notion that no
gentleman dare use his hands in manual labor. The West
Indian negro who has received a small smattering of an
education spurns hard work and goes to the towns, where
he can obtain a position as a clerk in a store. In this
way the fields come to be neglected and labor is actually
imported for the tilling of the soil. The black man wants
to attain his estate by revolution -- not physical but
mental -- while this can only come by a long process of
evolution. In his period of transition he should be
guided by the highest type of white man, broad
minded ; virile, keen and human. Given authority to
govern a small community, such as that of Carriacou, and
the right man's influence for good among the people is
infinite. The ease with which he can accomplish reforms
is astonishing. For instance, on my first day at
Carriacou I remarked to Smith that there seemed to be
scarcely any mosquitoes, indeed, I had not seen any, a
remarkable circumstance in view of the fact that the land
immediately to the southeast of the town was low and
swampy.
"You will have a hard time finding any on the
island now, although we have a few in the rainy
season."
"Kerosene and mosquito bar?" I asked.
"No, million-fish. In Barbados," continued Smith, "it
was noticed that on certain freshwater ponds there seemed
to be no mosquitoes. Upon investigation it was found that
these ponds were the habitat of the 'tap minnow'
(Girardinus pocciloides) or 'million-fish,' as it is
called, and that these small fellows ate the larvae of
the mosquito as they rose to the surface of the water.
The fish were introduced to other ponds, water tanks and
rain barrels, with the result that there was a
considerable reduction of the pest. I sent for some of
the fish,* and put them on exhibition in a large glass
jar in my office. Then I asked the people to bring in all
the larvae they could find floating on the top of the
water in rain barrels, tanks and so on. As soon as the
larvae were put in the jar, the million-fish swam to the
surface and gobbled them up. Then I told the people that
if they put million-fish in all the places where
mosquitoes breed, the eggs would be eaten up and there
would be no more malaria, filaria, and so forth. It was
the best kind of an object lesson. The fish were put in
all the small ponds, tanks and barrels and they
multiplied till there were enough to distribute all over
the island."
* The males are an inch
long, silver-grey in color and with a
red spot on each side near the head. The females are
about an inch and a quarter long but have no red
spot.
In a similarly easy manner he disposed of a
troublesome labor problem. The British government allows
six hundred pounds to be spent yearly for the maintenance
and building of roads in Carriacou. The work is done by
native women who receive nine pence a day or eighteen
cents in our money. Smith found that there were more
women dependent upon the road work for their livelihood
than he could employ at one time and the solution was
suggested by the so-called 'paternal system' used in St.
Thomas. He secured a list of all the road workers on the
island. Of this list he works forty each week, by rote,
and in this way the government road money is fairly
distributed. He is more like the owner of a large estate
than an employee of the British government ruling a small
island for a salary. I decided that there might be worse
places to live in than Carriacou and that with a man like
Smith on the island one's mind would not go altogether
fallow. Perhaps my liking for the island was strengthened
when I walked into a neat little store, not unlike the
kind one finds in a new suburb of a progressive city.
Here I could buy small cans of white lead and paint,
commodities I could not find in St. George's, and I found
sandpaper that had not lain in moldy disuse since the
times of the pirates.
As the day cooled into evening, I walked out to the
end of the jetty to contemplate the sunset and smoke a
quiet pipe. To the west Mabouya, where I had camped the
night before, hung a persistent little patch which
resisted the efforts of the trade to wash it away towards
the horizon of ragged clouds. To the north jagged Union
rose, the highest of all the Grenadines, but here my
peace came to an end.
![](artfengler/faf_houses.jpg)
There had been one house in which the
owner had lived at the top of the hill.
"What is your reputation?" broke upon my ears. I faced
about to find an officious native in a white linen suit,
cane and Panama hat standing by me. While I was groping
feverishly in my mind for a suitable reply, a native
policeman stepped up and hustled off his compatriot
before I should forever disgrace myself in this island of
soft language. I was no longer in the mood for sunsets
and I turned shorewards to find Smith preparing for the
drive to his home at Top Hill. The twilight merged into
the pale light of the new moon and as we slowly climbed
the hills Smith talked about his island.
"That is our botanical garden," he said, pointing out
an acre or two of planted land that looked like a truck
garden, "limes, water lemons, and a flower garden so that
we can make up a bouquet when we have a wedding, you
know."
On our way we met a Yellow Carib from Demerara. He was
the second Carib that I had seen and joy came with the
thought that in Saint Vincent I should find more of them,
the last remnant of the Yellow Carib in the Lesser
Antilles.
We had no sooner alighted in the courtyard at Top Hill
than Smith bounded ahead of me and, standing on the top
step of his verandah waited for me with outstretched
hand, and said, "Welcome to Top Hill." There was a warmth
about it that I shall never forget.
With us was MacQueen, an engineer, who might have been
taken out of one of Kipling's Indian stories. The two
were in a mood for stories that night, stories, for the
most part, of the natives, showing their craze for the
spectacular, their excitability, and the ease with which
they can be fooled.
"Did you ever," -- there was a slight burr in
the "ever," -- "did you everr hear the one about New
Year's Eve at Goyave, Mac?"
"Not in recent years," said Mac -- and we have the
story.
"Times had been prosperous and the priest was
looking forward to a large contribution at the mass
which was to see the Old Year out and the New Year in.
He had arranged an impressive ceremony, not the least
part of which was the shooting of fireworks on the
precise stroke of twelve. Rockets were planted in the
churchyard behind the gravestones, and a boy was
stationed to touch off the fuses at the given time.
The church was packed and in the dim candle light the
priest struck awe into the souls of his congregation
as he told them what a hell they were surely going to
if they did not repent. He spoke with the fervor of a
man working for that which was nearest his heart --
money.
"The emotional natives became conscience-stricken
as they thought, childlike, of their many misdeeds and
there was the terror of hell in that blubbering crowd.
But there was a chance -- a very small one, in truth
and the priest pointed to that heaven for which they
could make a fresh start with the coming of the New
Year. As he raised his hand aloft, the boy thought it
was the signal for the fireworks. In the dramatic
pause that followed the priest's warning, the awesome
silence was intensified by the spasmodic sniveling of
the people.
"Suddenly there was a blinding flash, and a hissing
rocket spurned its way heavenward. Another rocket, and
then a bomb exploded. The boy was doing his part well.
To the frightened congregation the end of the world
must be at hand. With a roar of terror, they rushed
from the church taking their pennies with them."
"O Lord," said Smith, the tears rolling down his
cheeks, "the poor priest was out the price of the
fireworks and lost his contribution."
"No doubt," said Mac, "he more than made up for it
in confession fees for he knew that his people were
uneasy of conscience."
"And talking about graveyards reminds me of a
burial we once had during the rainy season," continued
Smith. "A man had died of fever one hot afternoon and
I decided to have him buried that night. He was laid
out and I ordered a carpenter to make a box for him.
By ten o'clock the box was ready and we started down
the hill. There was no moon and the clouds shut out
the starlight. It was black as pitch and before the
days when we had a good road up from town. There were
three of us carrying the corpse, myself, the doctor
and my man, while the priest walked on ahead chanting
the Resurrection. We had no sooner started than it
began to rain. Not an ordinary rain or a shower, but
the torrential downpour of the tropics. In a short
time the roadway was a slippery downward surface over
which we were fighting to keep the box with its
contents from getting away from us. All this time that
lazy beggar was walking ahead of us chanting in a loud
voice for us to follow. The doctor, who was a crusty
old Scotsman, slipped and fell, pulling the box down
with him. Then, before we could take it up again, he
gave it a push and it coasted down the hill, catching
up the priest on its way. As the black-robed priest
disappeared astride the coffin, the doctor yelled,
'Gae 'lang wid ye and yeer Resurrection.'
The next day was the fifth of the moon. In these
latitudes where the moon seems to have a decided
influence upon the weather, there is a strong tendency
towards squalls on or about the fifth day of the new
moon. Captain Woolworth, in his book "Nigh onto Sixty
Years at Sea," mentions the fact that whenever he ran
into trouble it was almost invariably on the fifth day of
the new moon. Most of his voyages were made in the
tropics. Smith called my attention to the weather on this
day and I was careful to note every fifth day during the
rest of my six months in the tropics. Almost without
fail, from the third to the sixth day and generally on
the fifth day of the first quarter there was trouble at
sea. Conditions generally were unsettled. Heavy squalls
would blow down like the beginnings of small hurricanes.
Often I could count four or five squalls at one time
whipping up as many spots on the sea to a fury of white
caps and spindrift. There is something uncanny in the way
in which the moon seems to affect the weather in these
parts and I have often thought that the superstition of
the negro is not to be wondered or sneered at.
The next day the weather was settled and continued so
for the rest of that quarter.
While overhauling my outfit which I had dumped in a
corner of Smith's office I again came upon my little
mascot. I was untying a bag containing a few small bits
of Carib pottery, which I had dug up near Sauteurs in
Grenada, when a black fuzzy object jumped from the heap
of duffle before me and scampered across the floor.
"Hello! Who's your friend?" asked Smith.
"Oh, that's my mascot," I answered, as I dashed
after her on all fours.
"Devil a fine mascot! Why don't you get a nice loving
snake? Here! Take this!" said Smith, as he handed me a
paper box cover. Having recaptured the tarantula I told
the story of the luck she had brought me on my sail
around Kick 'em Jinny. I was afraid that she might get
into my blanket some time and bite me, so I took her life
and carried her hairy carcass in a cotton-padded
pasteboard box. I believe that after death her spirit
hovered over the masts of the Yakaboo and that she bore
me no ill will, for luck stayed with me for the rest of
the cruise.
Having remained over the fifth day, I sailed for new
islands and landed on picturesque Frigate, which lies off
Union. Here I found an abundance of wood and was soon
enjoying the crackle of a little blaze. It was good to be
a Robinson Crusoe again, if only for a few hours. Before
me on the beach lay the Yakaboo, her porpoise-like body
suggesting more of the fish than the boat. Across a
shallow bay, floored with white coral sand that gave it
the appearance of a marble floored pool, Union rose a
thousand feet.
I could make out the houses of a village, climbing
above the shores of the bay, the most remarkable of its
kind in the whole range of the Lesser Antilles, for I
found that here one may see a thousand natives, living in
small huts clustered close together, in exactly the way
their ancestors lived two hundred years ago, when they
were first brought over from Africa. One change only from
the early days -- that of clothing. The men wear trousers
and shirts and the women wear skirts. Remove their
civilized rags and you have them as they were in Africa.
I have heard that in some of the smaller and even more
out of the way cays of the Grenadines the natives live
among themselves with no clothing but the breech cloth.
May the eye of my camera see them thus in their natural
state on some future cruise.
While I was cooking my chocolate, a little open boat
had been sailing down the wind from the eastward. As she
beached close to the Yakaboo, two black men jumped out of
her while something in the stern unfolded its attenuated
length and I recognized Walker, famous as the tallest man
throughout these islands. I knew him before I saw him --
that is all of him -- for it takes two looks to get in
his full height. My eye wandered up and down his length
as one views a tall waterfall close by.
The British government had but lately taken over Union
Island from private owners and it had been Walker's duty
to survey and divide up the land so that it can be sold
in small parcels to the natives. With the strength and
perseverance of one charmed, Walker has carried his
transit in the fierce noon heat and cut his lines through
the brush. The soft tissue of his body has long since run
off in perspiration so that there is little left for the
sun to work upon. He goes about his work unmindful,
wearing a flannel shirt with a double thickness over his
spine and a large hat, which gives him the appearance of
an animated umbrella. He has other dimensions besides
height I found, one of them being breadth of heart.
No introduction was necessary for I had long since
heard of the tall Walker, and he had expected my coming
long before he made out the butterfly rig of the Yakaboo
zigzag its way up to the beach on Frigate.
During our conversation I admitted some knowledge of
drafting, upon which Walker said, "Come over to Union and
help me finish a map of the island and then we can take
off a few days for a little loaf." And so it came to pass
that my little green tent remained in its bag in the
forehold of the canoe and I became for a time an
inhabitant of Union.
A span of not much more than three nautical miles
separates the islands of Carriacou and Union and yet the
natives of Union differ from those of her neighbor by
nearly as many hundred years. Up to a short time before I
landed on the island, Union had been owned by one man or
one family from the time of its discovery. There had been
one house in which the owner lived -- on the top of a
hill. It was now occupied by Rupert Otway, who
represented the British government. Another house stood
"down de bay," in which the overseer had lived while the
rest of the population -- slaves -- had lived huddled
together in the towns of Ashton and Clifton.
In 1838 the slaves were freed and from that time the
prosperity of the island began to wane. But the blacks
continued to live there, holding no property, a few of
them working halfheartedly for the white man and the rest
dragging out a mere existence from the fish of the sea.
Now the government has bought the island and the ideal
thing is being done -- that is, the island is being
divided into small plots, which are held out with every
inducement for the native to buy. The cash price is
cheap, from four to eight pounds per acre. There is also
a system of payments arranged so that the most
impoverished native can take up a small piece of land and
from it work out the price to pay for
it.
![](artfengler/faf_cassava_1.jpg)
Cassava cake drying on a roof at Mayero.
Ruins of the old estate house of the St. Hilaires in
the background.
Not the least charm of these islands are the small
private forts which one finds hidden in the bush which
has overgrown the top of some hill of vantage, leaving
scant evidence to the casual eye of some small pile of
heavy masonry, the name and origin of which may have been
long since forgotten. At the time of the Napoleonic Wars,
when these islands were immensely rich in sugar, the
estate owners were forced to defend themselves from the
depredations of the privateers who infested these waters
like the sharks that swim in them. For this purpose the
old estate owners built private forts, one of which I
found on Union, undisturbed in its state of dilapidation,
four hundred feet above the sea, on the top of an
isolated hill so overgrown with cactus that we had to cut
our way to it.
![](artfengler/faf_cassava_2.jpg)
Drying the cassava, Isle de Ronde.
Otway gave me a temporary Man Friday and after an
hour's work with our cutlasses we had cleared away enough
of the cactus so that we could walk about on the rampart.
The top was five-sided, not an exact pentagon, about
fifty feet in diameter. Here were four old cannon, lying
as they had long ago sunk through their rotting carriages
to rest, still pointing in the direction of their old
enemies. One aimed at Mayero, two miles away, another
covered the channel to the east, a third at one time
dropped its death on Prune, while the fourth guarded the
little bay where the ruins of the old storehouse or
cabaret still stands. The romance of it all seemed
intensified in the fierce noonday sun and it required
little imagination to picture the days when fighting was
an earnest sport. In the center stood the stepping for
the flagstaff, the staff itself doubtless long since
appropriated for the mast of some native sloop that may
even now be resting deep down at the foot of Kick 'em
Jinny. As the negro uses his horse till it drops, so he
uses his sloop till at last a fierce squall gets him "all
standing" and she sinks with her fear-paralyzed crew,
leaving no sign, but a hatch or a broken bit of spar
which drifts away towards the setting sun.*
Under the steps, which descend from the rampart, was
the powder magazine, still intact, resembling an
old-fashioned bake oven -- and this reminded me that I
was due at Government house for luncheon.
The next day as I tried to leave Union, faulty
navigation on the part of the skipper caused the
centerboard of the Yakaboo to run afoul of a reef. The
Yakaboo got the worst of it and I had to put back for
repairs. I was on my way to Mayero. Both Walker and Otway
were glad to see me back in Union and no sooner had I
landed than they ordered their man to carry the canoe up
the hill to a shady place, where a native carpenter could
relieve me of the work of repairing her. This done, Otway
seemed to remember that he owed Mayero a visit in his
official capacity, Walker decided to take a day off, and
the three of us sailed across in the little government
sloop.
* In nearly all cases of
loss at sea in these waters, there remains
not the slightest trace of the missing boat or crew and
the
relatives blubber for a day or two, murmur,
"It wuz de will ob de Lard" and the tale becomes
history.
Our landing on Mayero was a strange performance. The
beach was steep-to with a fathom of water less than a
boat's length from dry sand. We threw out an anchor
astern and then ran the sloop inshore till her bowsprit
hung over the surf. Taking off our clothes, we tied them
together with our belts and threw them high up on the
beach. Three splashes followed and we crawled ashore and
dressed. After a climb of about fifteen minutes we gained
the top of the island, where "Miss Jane-Rose" rules her
little domain.
Mayero is one of those romance islands where in its
stagnation one can trace a past once beautiful, now
pathetic. At the time of the unrest in France, a cadet
branch of the Saint-Hilaire family came to this island,
thrived, and finally died with the ebbing fortunes of
sugar cane. The last descendant of this famous old
family, one of which was a lady-in-waiting to the Empress
Josephine at Malmaison, still governs the island under a
sort of feudal system. Her name is Jane-Rose de
Saint-Hilaire,* and she is a bright, keen woman of about
fifty, who rules her subjects with a firm hand and who
talks well. The two hundred inhabitants, more or less,
representing eighty families, on the island, are, for the
most part, descendants of the slaves of the old
Saint-Hilaires, and one can still see in their faces the
vanishing trace of the French aristocracy like a thin
outcropping of gold in the baser rock.
*Miss Jane-Rose died in
Feb. 1915.
Each family is allowed to erect a hut free of charge
of any kind. This hut is roofed with Guinea grass straw
and sided with wattles, cut on the island, and plastered
with mud. Most of the huts are floored with American
lumber. Each able-bodied inhabitant is allowed as many
acres as he or she cares to cultivate, on the metayer or
share system. By this arrangement of land tenure, at the
time of harvest the produce of the land, cotton and
cocoa, is divided equally between the proprietress and
the tenants. The people used formerly to give their share
of the cotton to Miss Jane-Rose to dispose of for them,
but they now sell it direct to the British government at
better prices. The fisherman reserve for the proprietress
a portion of each day's catch.
The people are essentially French and no religion
other than the Roman Catholic is tolerated. Miss
Jane-Rose officiates as priestess and occasionally a
priest from Carriacou comes to celebrate mass. She also
acts the part of mediator or judge in many disputes where
no grave issues are involved. The people, generally, are
a law-abiding lot and in eight years only two cases of
importance have come within the jurisdiction of Whitfield
Smith at Carriacou.
The little church, close to her house, was opened for
our benefit, and it was with great pride that she
exhibited the altar and the painted inscriptions on the
walls. The building was nothing better than a wooden
shed, an ant-eaten sanctuary into which small birds fly
to nest through the holes in the roof. As we talked, a
pathetic figure stole in to have a glimpse of "de mon in
de boat," and to furtively touch his clothes to feel of
what strange stuff they might be made. She was a little
woman of sixty or more, not shrunken, for that would
imply wrinkles, but lessened in size, as though she were
slowly evaporating. Her face was still the face of youth,
the sepia etching of a French beauty of the old days, the
skin dark, somewhat transparent and of fine texture. It
was a face beautiful and shapely in every line, the only
negro feature that I could detect being the darkness of
her skin. She seemed like some incautious mortal, under
the spell of a Circe, with an appeal in her eyes to a
deliverer who would never come.
With a parting gift of cassava cakes, taken from their
drying place on the roof of one of the nearby huts, we
scrambled down to the beach where we undressed and swam
to the sloop, holding our clothes clear of the water. The
wind had dropped with the setting of the sun, and we
drifted back to Union in the moonlight before a soft,
balmy air that carried no chill.
The next day I was more successful in leaving the
island. Walker insisted upon accompanying me in his sloop
to pilot me, as he said, through the intricate reefs. It
afterwards turned out that he doubted the ability of the
Yakaboo to make the passage to Bequia in safety. After
three hours of cautious sailing, we ran ashore on
Cannouan to cook our luncheon. Here it was that Walker
taught me a new trick. The natives of the island had come
down to have a close scrutiny of the strange man who was
sailing about the islands in "de canoe," and I had come
to the conclusion that their presence was far more
picturesque than desirable. They handled everything,
examined my dishes, and one of them even started to open
my food bags. I swore at them, but they did not seem to
understand. To my, "What the devil shall I do with these
people?"
"Oh, I'll fix 'em," said Walker, at which he
swept one arm toward them and then pointing at me
yelled :
"Get out! or 'de mon' will put a curse on you."
The words were magic. Profanity had made no
impression, but the putting on of a curse by one who
bordered on the supernatural -- that was something
different! With one bound they cleared the place of our
nooning and with another they were in the brush where for
the rest of our stay I could see the tops of their woolly
heads and the gleam of white eyeballs, curiosity and fear
holding them balanced, as it were, at the nearest point
of safety. After that, whenever I was troubled by curious
natives I repeated Walker's "magic formula," Get out! Or
I'll put a curse on you.
Six o'clock found the canoe and the sloop three and
one half miles from West Cape on Bequia with a strong lee
tide, that is, off shore, and the wind dropping. The
sloop, being heavier with her rock ballast and her crew
of three, had outsailed the much lighter canoe in the
choppy seas and was leading somewhat to windward. Just as
the sun was setting, I saw a number of fins coming down
towards the canoe. I now got the greatest fright of my
whole cruise. All my past experience as to the cowardice
of the shark vanished, leaving a void into which fear
rushed as into a vacuum. My imaginative brain could only
attach those fins to a school of huge sharks, some of
them probably larger than the canoe I was sailing in.
Of what avail would my seven inches of freeboard be to
one of those fellows should he choose to slide his ugly
head over the gunwale? Of what avail my armament of two
rifles, one revolver, and one axe? At a maximum I had a
bullet each for nineteen sharks and perhaps my trusty axe
would finish up one or two, but here was a horde
descending upon me. I remembered how sharks were in the
habit of jumping clear of the water and tearing out the
blubber on a whale's back ; at any rate, I thought,
I would finish one or two of them before they dragged my
mangled form into the sea and so forth -- oh, happy
moment!
There was not the slightest use in altering my course
to avoid them, so I held on and the next moment was in
the midst of a school of snorting, playing porpoises. I
could have jumped overboard and hugged them. I swore that
the fun of graining them from the swaying footropes would
never again be mine, nor would I even use their oil on my
boots. To me the porpoise is henceforth a sacred animal.
There were hundreds of them in the school and among them
were blackfish of a considerable size. Playful and
curious, they would make a dash with torpedo speed and
then dive under the canoe or swerve around the ends,
fascinating me with their wonderful grace and ease. One
of them, making a slight miscalculation, bumped the
centerboard and nearly upset the canoe. This made me
think it safer to run off the wind and travel with them,
presenting the edge of the board rather than the side.
And so I kept them company till they had had their fun
and resumed their travels.
![](artfengler/faf_union.jpg)
Preparing to leave Union. Walker sitting
on the rail of his sloop and regarding Yakaboo
doubtfully.
![](artfengler/faf_repairs.jpg)
Coming back for repairs. Six men doing the
work of two.
Some of them would jump clear of the water and with a
half turn in the air would land on their backs with a
resounding splash. It was their way of scratching their
backs and I could almost see a grin of delight on their
mouths. As they left me, twilight gave way, and I was
alone in the starry night. Walker in the sloop was
somewhere to windward -- out of sight. I had taken in
sail and was now rowing, using for a guide Orion's Belt,
suspended above the swaying top of the stubby little
mizzen mast. As the moon rose, I could read the
compass.
After an hour or so I must have fallen asleep, still
rowing, for I awoke at nine o'clock, the oars still in my
hands, to find that I was off my course and about a mile
from West Cape, which now loomed up black in the
distance. The current had swung the canoe around little
by little as I had ceased to take notice of the compass
till I was rowing northward instead of nearly due east.
In another hour I was headed into Admiralty Bay in the
lee of Bequia.
By that same law of compensation which I have already
mentioned, I was now rewarded for a hard day of travel at
sea. I shall never forget the beauty of that night as I
slipped into the easier waters under the long arm of West
Cape, which reaches from Bequia three miles out to sea.
The moon was high in a brilliant sky across which the
trade clouds rolled like a curtain, on their never-ending
march to the Spanish Main. The Cape stood lofty and dark
and bold and I could see the surf rise from the rocks,
high into the air, white and forbidding like a living
thing.
As the moon swung over its zenith, I could make out
the little huts and trees on the island as in daytime and
finally I saw a small fire on the beach, near where I
judged the village to be. It was half-past eleven when I
rowed up to the jetty, which stood out into the water
like an immense centipede. The squeak of my rowlocks
betrayed my presence and the natives, who were lying on
the beach by the fire, rushed out onto the jetty. They
had been waiting for me. Then came the usual babble of
voices and torrent of questions.
Their curiosity was unappeased for I tied my painter
to a sloop at anchor near the jetty and even as I was
preparing to turn in, a native policeman drove the crowd
inshore.
The Yakaboo was indeed a real "live-aboard-ship" and
had my stove been in commission I could have cooked my
supper in the cockpit. In fact, I could have lived aboard
indefinitely as long as food and water held out, for I
could rig up my tent over the cockpit in the event of
rain. Cold meat, crackers, and cool fresh water made an
excellent repast for a starved and healthy stomach.
One who has never done this sort of thing can scarcely
appreciate my sense of complete luxury as I lay in my
blankets in the snug cockpit of the Yakaboo. And always
at the mention of the Yakaboo I think of her as a thing
of life. There was scarcely any motion in the quiet
waters of the bay, yet I could feel her buoying me up, as
though I were resting on a small cloud suspended in
midair, a Mahomet's coffin. Then as I rolled over to lie
on my side she would give gracefully-she was always there
under me, holding me up out of the sea-my water cradle. A
great contentment came over me as I lay contemplating the
magical harbor into which I had found my way like a tired
gull.
I had hardly fallen asleep when Walker sailed
alongside and awoke me. He had lost track of me in the
darkness and had been looking for me till the moonlight
had shown the Yakaboo crawling into Admiralty harbor. He
sent his two men ashore and I passed him some food and
one of my blankets. He left again at five in the morning
with some food which I insisted upon his taking and a
better opinion of the ability of the Yakaboo. There are
few men I should care to have with me in the open. Walker
is one of them.
With the sun came the incessant babble of an
increasing crowd on shore. Sleep was impossible and I
landed at nine o'clock. Before I had turned in the night
before, I asked the crowd whether "Old Bill" Wallace, the
Nestor of whalemen in the Grenadines, was still alive.
Yes, they told me, he lived in the hills beyond "Tony
Gibbon's."
"Old Bill" came down as I was cooking breakfast over a
coalpot in the parsonage. (When I end this life I shall
go with an infinite debt to lighthouse keepers, Scotsmen
and English parsons.) I gave him a letter I had carried
from Boston in my portfolio. It was from a shipmate of
his son, who had been lost at sea. In it were two
photographs of young Wallace on the next but last of his
voyages, showing his active young figure at the "mincing"
board and in the cross trees. As the old man opened the
letter a look of surprise came over him and he held the
photographs in trembling hands. It was like a message
from the dead, almost, to see his son at work on the
whaler, and a far-off look came into his eyes as he stood
there, brought back so suddenly to the vague tragedy that
had been the hardest burden of a hard
life.
![](artfengler/faf_old_bill.jpg)
"Old Bill" and the skipper of the
Yakaboo.
"I am old and broken down now, and not much use," he
said, "but as long as these old hands can work I'll keep
on going till I slip my moorings and get off on my last
cruise." Hard work and a rough life had been the lot of
this relic of a fast vanishing type of deepwater sailor.
In that romance age of fifteen he had spewed the silver
spoon from his mouth and left it on the hearth of his
Scotland home to taste his first sting of bitterness
under the care of a Yankee skipper.
He finally drifted to Bequia with his earnings and
bought a large sugar plantation. But the seafaring man
rarely prospers on land. The failure of sugar cane in the
islands, followed by a disastrous hurricane, brought an
end to his few years of ease, and he had to turn to the
humpbacking that he had taught the natives, "jumbie
crabs," he called them. Now, too old to go whaling, he is
rusting away like the ships he used to sail, waiting to
"slip his moorings."
In the afternoon, I climbed the hill to his house,
rebuilt in a corner of the ruins of his former home, as
if backed off in a corner by fate. There I met his
blue-eyed little wife and drank with them the bitter tea
that had simmered on the coals since morning. It was many
years since he had talked to one from the States and as
the afternoon grew old his enthusiasm over the adventures
of his life rose to the fitting climax of a hurricane off
Delos in Africa.
The rickety chair would no longer hold him and he
stood in the doorway, dark against the levelled rays of
the setting sun, a fiery, Quixotic figure, brandishing
his cutlass to illustrate how, as a mate on the almost
doomed ship, he had stood years ago in that tense moment
with uplifted axe ready to cut the weather shrouds. She
was "six points higher than Jordan," he had thought, as
she lay with her lee rail under water, not a rag up, held
by the force of the wind against her spars. Then -- "be
th' powers o' Malkenny's cat," she had righted herself
and the ship was saved without losing a stick. I can feel
his enthusiasm now and I wonder if, in the eternal
fitness of things, the good saint will promote him to
captaincy on the ghost of that ship on the seas of the
world to come.
There was a pathetic touch in his farewell to me, for
I had brought back to him the sweet memories of a gallant
son. I left him still standing in the doorway, the
cutlass hanging forgotten from one arm, the other around
the shoulder of his mild little wife.
One hears a great deal of the tropical sunset, but to
me there is nothing to compare with the moonlight of
these islands, and it was a continual source of pleasure
to wander about in the hills in the light of the full
moon. There is a color effect that I have found in no
other place. The blue sky as in daytime, but softened,
with the motion of the large, white, fleecy clouds in
contrast. The sea a darker blue with the pattern of the
coral reefs showing up yellow and brown. The island
itself a subdued blue framed in the thin line of white
foam on the rocks. Distance was here and as I stood high
above the bay I could see the islands I had left,
Cannouan, Mayero, Union, high and dark, and even
Carriacou, thirty miles away.
On my way down to the bay, I passed a group of little
native huts, where a more or less heated discussion was
in progress.
"He no sail in de da' -- he floy in de
noight! You tink dat li'le boat go in de water? Oh,
my!" and I realized that I was the topic of
conversation. As I neared them, one said, "O Lard, HE
come now."
I now understood why I had been so quickly discovered
when I rowed into the harbor the night before. One of the
natives, with a powerful ship's telescope "obtained" from
some Yankee whaler, had picked up my queer rig, late in
the afternoon, as I was approaching Bequia and had seen
my sails go down shortly after sunset. They knew that the
wind was dropping and they believed that I had spread out
my sails parallel to the water and flown. In fact, the
common belief in Bequia was that the sailing was only a
bluff and that I really covered my distances by flying at
night.
So they had built a bonfire and were waiting for me on
the beach, where they knew I would land. Sure enough, I
did land there, but before they had had a chance to see
me fly, I had folded the wings of the Yakaboo and was
rowing. They could not understand how such a small boat
could live in their seas. The cut of the sails suggested
wings and the natural deduction was, "He no sail, he
floy."
![](artfengler/faf_bequia.jpg)
The effect of the trade wind on the
vegetation, Bequia.
I was a man apart and I found out later that the
natives regarded me with a great deal of awe and thought
that I carried some sort of imp or fetish with me in the
canoe. Perhaps I did. Was there not a gru-gru nut the
postmaster at Goyave had given me, and how about my
little dead mascot? Except for the more intelligent men,
they were afraid of me, but curiosity would get the
better of their fear and as I talked to them I would now
and then feel the furtive fingers of some of the bolder
ones touching my clothes as one would a priest's
robe.
It was one afternoon, while I was visiting a
"tryworks" on the south shore, where they were boiling
oil from my friend the porpoise, that I espied a little
boat with a peculiar rig coming down from the East. The
natives confirmed my guess, it was a Carib canoe. By a
lucky chance the canoe beached almost at my feet. There
were four Indians in her and I immediately questioned
them as to the settlement at Sandy Point, on the north
end of Saint Vincent. Yes, they were from the Carib
Country and would be glad to have me come up and live
with them as long as I wished. What a joy it was to see
the lighter color of their skins, their straight black
hair, and thin lips. They reminded me of the Japanese and
my eye did not miss the ease with which they carried
themselves and handled their canoe.
The next morning I said, "Yakaboo," to the Grenadines
and laid my course for Saint Vincent and the Carib
Country.