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CHAPTER VII
DELIGHTS OF CHANNEL RUNNING --
JOSEPHINE IN SAINT LUCIA
THE NEXT morning, March 30th, found me once more in
the Yakaboo rowing out of the bay of Château
Belaire half an hour after sunrise. The night had been an
anxious one on the morgue-suggesting cot of the rest room
in the police station -- for the devilish impish gusts
had swept down one after the other from the
Souffrière and shaken that house till I thought it
would blow over like a paper box and go sailing out into
the bay. If those fellows caught us in the channel what
would the poor Yakaboo do?
I argued that the wind coming down the smooth plane of
the mountain slope and shooting out across the water had
developed a velocity far greater than anything I should
meet in the channel. Perhaps so -- but I should learn a
bit about it later. I somehow bamboozled my mind into
quiescence and at last fell asleep. Almost immediately
the big, burly Barbadian awoke me. In an hour and a half
I had rowed the six and a half miles to Point DeVolet,
where I set sail.
I was now started on my first long channel run and it
was with considerable interest if not anxiety that I
watched the canoe and the seas. I had a lurking suspicion
that I had made a grievous error when I had designed the
Yakaboo ; I had perhaps erred on the side of safety
and had given her a too powerful midship section in
proportion to her ends. That was the feeling I had while
sailing in the channels of the Grenadines. I was still
traveling eastward as well as northward, and I knew that
it would only be by the most careful windward work that I
should be able to fetch the Pitons, thirty-one miles
away. The wind on this day was the same trade that I had
met with lower down, but the seas were longer than those
of the Grenadines, and, if not so choppy, were more
vicious when they broke ; there would be less
current to carry me to leeward.
I had scarcely got her under way and was still under
the lee of the land when the first sea came, like the
hoary hand of Neptune himself and we turned to meet it.
Aft I slid, she lifted her bow -- just enough -- and the
sea broke under us -- and we dropped down its steep back,
with lighter hearts. In with the mainsheet and we were
off again, the canoe tearing along like a scared
cotton-tail -- a little white bunch under her stern.
There was something worth while in this and I kept my
eyes to weather for the next sea. Again we met it and
came through triumphant. Perhaps I had not erred after
all. Another sprint and so on.
After a while the Yakaboo seemed to lag a little and
hang her head like a tired pony. It was the forward
compartment that was leaking again and I ran her into the
wind, dropping the jib and mainsail. The little mizzen
aft, flat as a board, held her directly into the wind's
eye (which I believe is the best position for a very
small craft hove-to), and I could go about sponging out
the compartment.
I had, of course, to keep a sharp lookout ahead for
breaking seas. If a sea threatened, I would hastily clap
on the forehatch and give the screws a couple of turns
and then roll back on my haunches into the after end of
the cockpit. My precious camera was lashed half way up
the mizzen mast. Lightened of the water in her forehold I
would hoist the mainsail and jib and give her rein, that
is, trim her sheets for another scamper to windward. She
was the spirited pony again.
That we were traveling well there could be no doubt.
The wind was blowing at least twenty miles an hour and
the canoe was covering her length with the smooth action
of a thoroughbred. Yet when I looked astern after the
first hour it seemed as though we were still under the
shadow of Saint Vincent. I knew later that we had made
five miles. It was discouraging to look backwards, and I
did very little of it in my runs afterwards. I would wait
till the greyish blue of the island ahead had turned to
blue and was shading into green and then I would look
back to the island that I had just left and I would
estimate that I was perhaps half way across the channel.
Having assured myself that I really was half way across,
l kept my eyes over the bow, noting the minute changes of
the land ahead. But I am not yet half way across this
channel.
Soon my eye began to focus on a persistent whitecap
that my brain refused to believe was a sail. But the eye
insisted and the brain had to give in when the speck
refused to move -- it was always there, just to leeward
of the Pitons -- and it grew into a definite shape. Its
course must almost cross mine, for as it grew larger and
larger, it edged to windward closing in on the Pitons and
was at last directly on my course. Nearer it came till I
could make out the figure of a man poised erect out over
the water. Another second and I could see the line to
which he was holding and which ran to the top of the
mast. His feet were on the gunwale. Then I distinguished
several forms aft of him in the canoe, all leaning far
out to windward to see what strange bird the Yakaboo
might be, coming up out of the
south.
![](artfengler/faf_canoe.jpg)
Native canoe under sail.
The news of my coming had not jumped the channel ahead
of me, but these fellows had recognized my rig from afar
as a rarity -- something to investigate. I shall never
forget the picture of them rushing by. They might have
been Caribs of old descending, like the Vikings that they
were, on some island to be conquered. They came down the
wind with terrific speed, the water foaming white under
them, a third of the keel showing, the glistening
forefoot leaving a train of drops like a porpoise
clearing the water.
For an instant my eye held it ; the man poised
over the sea ; the figures in the boat, bronze and
ebony, tense with excitement ; the white,
sun-bleached sails, now outlined against a blue sky and
now thrown against an indigo sea, rivaling the brilliant
snowy clouds above. As they shot by, close abeam, their
arms shot up and they gave me a mighty yell while I waved
my hat and shouted back at them. If this sight of a
single canoe coming down the wind thrilled the hairs
along my spine into an upright position, what would my
feeling have been to see a whole fleet of them as in the
old days? I would not look back -- I wanted the memory of
that passing to remain as it was and I sailed on,
thinking for some time of each detail as it was indelibly
impressed upon my mind.
Like most of us, who are blessed with a lean body, I
also have that blessing which usually goes with it -- an
appetite which is entirely out of all proportion to the
size of that lean body. Nervous energy as well as manual
labor requires food and when I made my channel runs there
was an expenditure of both -- and I needed feeding. I
always had food handy in my cockpit.
My mainstay was the jelly coconut or water -- nut as
they call it. This is the coconut that has not yet
reached the stage where the meat is the hard, white
substance which we meet in the kitchen pantry in the
shredded form, but is still in the baby stage when the
meat is soft and jelly-like. In this stage the milk is
not so rich as later on, but is a sort of sweet
coco-tasting water. I never wanted for a supply of
coconuts.
The natives along shore invariably saw to it that
there were four or five of them in my cockpit, prepared
for instant use in the following manner : the native
balances the nut on the palm of the left hand, while with
a cutlass (not called machete in these islands that have
not known the Spaniard, except as a pirate), he cuts
through the hard, smooth surface of the husk and trims
the pulpy mass, where the stem joins the nut, into a
point. At any time, then, with a single slice of my
knife, I could lop off this pulpy point and cut through
the soft stem end of the inner shell, making a small hole
through which I could drink the water.
When first it passes over your tongue, jaded by the
civilized drinks which have a tang to them, your judgment
will be, "Insipid!" Go out into the open and leave ice
water a week behind you and your tongue will recover some
of its pre-civilized sensitiveness. You will swear that
there is nothing so cool nor delicious as the water of
the jelly coconut. After the water has been drunk there
is yet the jelly to be eaten. First a slice of the husk
is cut oft to be used as a spoon. Then, using my knife as
a wedge and my axe as a driver, I split open the nut and
scooped out the jelly from the halves.
When my supply of pilot bread ran out I carried soda
crackers and sometimes the unleavened bread of the
natives. Raw peameal sausage helped out at times and
there was, of course, the chocolate of which I have
spoken before. I also carried other tropical fruits
besides coconuts, mangoes, bananas, pineapples, but I
never ate more than one sort on a run. The coconut was my
mainstay, however, and that with a little bread and a
piece of chocolate would make an excellent stop-gap till
I could reach shore and cook a substantial evening
meal.
I was now half way across the channel, I judged, for
neither island had the advantage of nearness nor
distance. After a while Vieux Fort began to work its way
to windward of me and the canoe was still hanging bravely
on to the Pitons. She was doing excellent work to
windward, creeping up the long hollows in pilot's luffs
as is the habit of this rudderless craft. The sum total
of these small distances eaten to windward a little more
than made up for what we lost when we lay-to for a
combing sea. Saint Lucia had long since changed from a
misty grey to blue grey, and then slowly the green of the
vegetation began to assert itself in varying shades as
patches of cultivation became defined. Dun-colored spots
on the hillsides took the shapes of native huts. It was
like the very slow development of a huge photographic
plate.
When within a few miles of the island the wind began
to draw to the south'ard, and as I eased the sheets of
the canoe, she quickened her pace like a horse headed for
home. The plate was developing rapidly -- I could make
out the trees on the mountain ridges and the beaches
along shore. Vieux Fort was on our beam, the Pitons
towered over us ; then with the hum of tarred
rigging in a gale, the centerboard of the Yakaboo crooned
its parting song to the channel and we lost our motion in
the glassy calm of Souffrière Bay. We had
completed our first long jump.
High above me the projectile form of the Petit Piton
tore an occasional wraith from the low-flying trade
clouds. Inset in its steep side, some twenty feet above
where I was now rowing, was a niched shrine to the Virgin
Mary, to whom many a hasty prayer had been uttered during
the fervor of bare deliverance from the rafales (squalls)
of the channel, prayers probably quickly forgotten in
these calm waters under the Pitons and the memory of them
soon washed away in the little rum shops of the coast
town, which gets its name from the Souffrière in
the hills above it and gives that name to the bay before
it. By this sign of the Virgin Mary, I was leaving for a
time the Protestant faith of the outer Antilles and
entering the Catholic. In a measure, I was leaving the
English for the French, for although Saint Lucia has been
in the possession of the English since 1803, there still
remains the old creole atmosphere of the French
régime.
As I swung around the base of the smaller Piton, the
leveling rays of the late afternoon sun caught the
distant walls of wooden houses weatherworn to a silky
sheen. The dull red of a tiled roof here and there, the
sharp white of what I soon learned were the police
buildings, broke the drab monotone of the town. A little
coasting steamer backed out, crab-like, from a cane-laden
jetty and as we passed in the bay, three white cotton
tufts from her whistle tooted my first welcome to Saint
Lucia.
I had planned to show my papers to the police at
Souffrière and then to pitch my tent on some sandy
beach beyond a point that interested me just north of the
town. I should then have a good start for my row along
the lee coast on the next day and I should soon be
channel running again -- to Martinique and the Empress
Josephine -- I had an especial interest in her.
But one never knows. It happened at Carriacou and it
is apt to happen at any time. The perverse imp, whatever
his name may be, thrives on the upsetting of plans. I had
no sooner crawled up on the jetty of Souffrière
and stretched my legs when a black limb of the law
confronted me.
"Dis no port ob entry," he said ; "you
mus' go to Castries."
Castries was sixteen miles farther along the coast and
I had already traveled forty-two miles since sunup. I
looked at my watch and the hands showed four-thirty. I
looked out over the sea and saw the sun, like an
impatient boy rushing through his chores, racing for his
bath in the horizon, a huge molten drop, trickling down
the inverted bowl of the firmament. If I now took to my
canoe again and slept on the beach somewhere up the
shore, I should get into trouble at Castries for I had
already put my foot on shore.
I finally decided that it was two of one and half a
dozen of another -- two being the trouble I should get
into by staying here and six being the trouble I might
get into in the proportionately larger town of Castries.
Confound a government that spends thirty cents for red
tape to wrap up a package worth ten!
Up to this time, my coming had not been detected, but
with the increasing agitation of the policeman, it dawned
upon the jetty stragglers that something unusual was on
foot. Some one noticed the strange canoe tethered like a
patient animal to one of the legs of the jetty. Some one
else noticed that there was a strange person talking with
the policeman. I was rapidly being discovered by a horde
of babbling, ragged beach-loafers and fishermen, who
followed like swarming bees as we made our way to the
police buildings. The swarm was effectually barricaded
outside as we entered the building, where I showed my
papers to Sergeant Prout.
In these islands when precedent lacks, complexity
arises. And here was something complex -- a man who
traveled alone, voyaging in the daytime and sleeping at
night on whatever beach he happened to land. The sergeant
must needs have advice, so he sent for the leading
merchant of the town and the lawyer. The merchant, being
a man of business, said, "Ask your superior," and the
lawyer, being a man of caution, said, "Place the
responsibility on some one else," at which the sergeant
telephoned to His Majesty's Treasurer at Castries. The
reply I did not hear. My canoe was carried into the
cobbled courtyard of the police buildings and my outfit
was locked up in a cell next to that of a thief.
"And now," said I, "if you will lend me a
coalpot and lock me up with my outfit I shall cook my
supper and go to bed." Not a smile on the faces around
me.
"But there is an hotel in thee town," came from a
voice at my side, and not much higher than my belt, "I
will conduc' you there."
He pronounced "hotel" with a lisp that made it more
like "hostel," and called the article "thee." I looked
down and beheld him who was to be my henchman during my
stay in Souffrière. He was a little fellow, black
as the record of a trust magnate and with a face that
went with the name of Joseph Innocent.
I would take Sergeant Prout's word for anything and
his nod in answer to my questioning look was a good
voucher for Joseph. And so we walked out, Joseph parting
the crowd before me, proudly carrying my camera and
portfolio while I followed, a pace or two behind, to
observe the quaint old town. Laid out in regular squares,
the houses toed the line of the sidewalks in one
continuous wall from street to street. For the most part,
the walls were bare of paint, or if paint had ever been
used, it had long since been crumbled by the sun and
washed away by the rain. To relieve the dead geometric
regularity, picturesque grilled balconies overhung the
sidewalks, giving proof that at some time there had been
life in the streets worth observing.
We passed the open square of the market with the bare,
sun-heated church at the far end, facing the west, as
though its memories lay forever behind it. Joseph stopped
at one of the myriad doors in the walls of houses. Would
I ever be able to find this door again? -- and I stepped
from the street into the cool dark salle à manger
of this West Indian hotel. The mulatresse, who received
me, was of a better looking type, I thought, than the
creole negress of the English islands. "Could I have food
and room for the night?"
"Mais oui," for in spite of my shifty appearance my
camera and portfolio were badges of respectability and
vouched for me. I dispatched Joseph for some cigarettes
and while awaiting his return I noticed that the
mulatresse was setting places for two. I was to have
company -- a comforting thought when I could not be alone
on the beach. I am never so lonesome as when eating
alone, where there are people about. On the beach I
should have had the company of the setting sun, the
tropical starlit night, and the murmur of the little
rippling surf on the smooth sands -- but here! the
shuffling of the silent negress as she placed the food
before me would have been loneliness itself.
When Joseph came with the tin of cigarettes, I offered
him a "thrupence," for he had served me well. But he was
a diplomat from his wide-spreading toes to his apish
face. There is a patois saying, "Zo quité yone
boudé plein fait zo sote, " -- "Don't let a
bellyful fool you."
"No! You give me de two copper," indicating the coins
in my hand, "for you need de silver for other person." He
was an artist, I learned later, and cared little for
money -- but would I get him some paints and brushes when
I reached Castries?
The mulatresse had scarcely announced, "Monsieur est
servi," when the other guest entered. He was an
Englishman -- of the island -- spare and well-groomed, as
one generally finds them, a government engineer on his
monthly tour inspecting the telephone system, which
girdles the island. While we ate our thon (tuna) our
conversation turned on the tuna fisheries of Martinique
and I mentioned Josephine and Trois-Îlets.
"Josephine! Martinique! Why man alive!
Josephine spent part of her childhood days right here
in Souffrière and I don't know but what she was
born on this island -- in the northern part -- at
Morne Paix-Bouche."
And so it happened that I was to be denied the beach
to stumble upon a page or two of that life of contrasts
-- pathetic and romantic -- of the Empress Josephine.
Over our coffee and cigarettes my friend told me of
Père Remaud of the parish of Gros-Islet in the
north of Saint Lucia -- the man who knew more about
Josephine's life in this island than any one else. I
decided, then, to spend some time in Saint Lucia and I
learned many things about her -- but who wants to read
dry history sandwiched in between salty channel runs? Our
conversation turned to other things and then died out
even as the glow of our cigarettes. We were both tired
and mutually glad to turn
in.
![](artfengler/faf_slipped.jpg)
The camera got them just as they had
slipped through the high surf.
But the wakening effect of the coffee and the cold
funereal sheets of the high antique four-poster onto
which I had climbed to rest, kept off slumber for a
while. What a cruise of contrasts it was -- from the
primitive life of the Carib living on fish and cassava, I
had sailed in a day from the fifteenth century into the
eighteenth. From my roll of blankets on the high ground
of Point Espagñol I had come to the more
civilized, but not more comfortable, husk mattress of the
French régime. I was not long in deciding that the
husk mattress was no less aged than the four-poster.
Perhaps the friends of Josephine had slept in this bed,
on this very mattress -- whatever their sins may have
been may this have shriven them! Sadness entered my mood
and I fell asleep.
Can the lover of small indulgences begin the day
better than I began my first morning in Saint Lucia? At
six there was a knock at my door, followed by the
entrance of the mulatresse bearing a huge basin of cold
water with a calabash floating on its surface, the
simplest and yet the most delightful bath I have known.
Scarcely had I slipped on my clothes -- the mulatresse
must have known by the sounds the progress of my toilet
-- when another knock ushered in a small pot of steaming
Liberian coffee such as only they of the French islands
can grow and brew. There is but one sequence to this -- a
cigarette. This, then, was my formula, after which I
stepped out onto the street where Joseph was waiting for
me.
Not far from the town, up in the hills, lies Ventine,
the beauty spot of Saint Lucia. This is the safety valve,
a sort of Hell's Half Acre, that saved Saint Lucia during
the eruptions of Saint Vincent and Martinique. As the
well-kept road wound upward, lined with orderly fields
and occasional clumps of trees, I could easily imagine
myself to be in southern Europe, for the morning was
still cool and the road free except for an infrequent
figure shuffling along at its ease with its burden
balanced on top. It was pleasant to hear the prattle of
Joseph with its French construction of the English and
that soft inflection, which we lack so much in our own
harsh language.
"Look! you see that bird there? Eet ees call
the cuckoo mayoque by the creole. They say that God,
w'en he was building the world (but I don' beleeve
it), ask the cuckoo to carry stone to the stream. But
the cuckoo would not do it because it would soil his
beautiful fethaire. Then God say, 'For that you shall
never, drink from the stream an eef you do you will
drown. An' now the cuckoo can only get water from the
flowers and leaves."
A little farther on, he darted to the side of the road
and brought back a leaf of the silver fern. He told me to
hold out my hand -- "no, wiz zee back upwards." Placing
the leaf on the brown skin he gave it a slap and the leaf
slipped off leaving the delicate tracery of its form in a
silver powder. And so it was on that delightful walk, I
came to like the little native, bright and full of
spirit. Some day he may, as a regular duty, open my door
in the morning and say, "Will you have your, coffee now,
sir, or w'en you arize?"
We finally arrived at the Ventine, which is the
thin-crusted floor of an ancient crater. The sulphur
smell that greeted me brought back memories of
Yellowstone Park. From Southern Europe I had been whisked
back to the States. And to carry the illusion still
further I found there three Americans, Foster, Green and
Smith (good plain Yankee names of no pretension), who
were working the sulphur of the crater. We fell on each
other's necks, so to speak.
One needed a guide and Foster took me about on the hot
floor to see the boiling mud pools and the steam jets. On
our way up to the cottage where the men lived with their
families Foster showed me the natural advantages of
living in a place like this. The region of the Ventine
would be a wonderful place of retirement for the
rheumatic cripple. Here were hot springs of temperatures
from tepid to boiling, cold mountain streams that made
natural shower baths, as they tumbled down the rocks, and
pools of curative mineral water.
As we walked along the path Foster dug his hands into
the bank. "When you want to wash your hands just reach
into the side of the hill -- here -- and haul out a lump
of this soft clay stuff. Rub your hands together and a
little farther on -- here -- you have the choice of
either hot or cold water to wash it off in. You see, my
hands are as soft as a baby's skin."
He talked like an advertisement. They are planning to
build a hotel at the Ventine some day. If they do it will
be a new Souffrière come to life and I can imagine
no more delightful resort.
We left the Ventine in the cool of the afternoon and
passing the town walked out along the broad east road to
the ruins of the old French baths, where the aristocracy
of France, some of them exiles, and some come to the
island to recoup their fortunes, were wont to take the
cure. There is but little now remaining, a few walls, a
tank into which the sulphur water flows from the mountain
stream, and a massive stone arch set in a thick woods
that takes two hours from each end of the day and holds a
gloom like a shroud for the dead past. A cow was grazing
where grace once trod and where perhaps the little
Yeyette* came with her elders. That evening I chatted
with a man, Monsieur Devaux, whose grandaunt,
Mademoiselle Petit L'Étang, had often spoken of
having played with the little Josephine, at the estate of
Malmaison in the hills to the north of
Souffrière.
But there was little else to be learned and the next
morning I left for Castries.
Offshore, trying to claw into the wind against the
tide, was a little sloop which somehow looked familiar.
It was calm alongshore and I rowed for an hour. Then a
breeze came directly from the north and I made sail for
beating. As I neared the sloop on the out tack she ran up
a signal. I dropped my mainsail for an instant to let
them know that I understood, and ran in again on the
other tack. She was the Glen Nevis from Grenada and had
called at Kingstown on her way to Saint Lucia with
ice.
When she followed me into port an hour later, I found
that my Man Friday of St. George's was in command.
* Childhood name of the
Empress Josephine.
They had left Kingstown the day before I had left
Château Belaire, and although I had stopped off a
day at Souffrière, I beat them into Castries by an
hour. In other words, it had taken them seventy-two hours
to cover the sixty miles from Kingstown to Castries. My
time for traveling the same distance was twenty hours.
This showed the advantage of the canoe as a vehicle in
these waters, for I could not only sail the rough
channels but also slip along under the lee of the islands
where the larger boats would be helplessly becalmed. As
these fellows sail they must, of necessity, lose valuable
ground to windward by dropping away from the island they
are leaving to avoid calms and then they must beat their
way up to the next island.
Compared with Grenada and Saint Vincent, the lee coast
of Saint Lucia is low and uninteresting except for two
wonderful harbors, close together, near the northern
end ; Cul-de-Sac, the location of the Usine Central
for the manufacture of sugar, and Castries, the coaling
station of the English islands, with its Vigie, the
lately abandoned Gibraltar of the British West Indies.*
It was in the hills between these almost landlocked
harbors that Sir John Moore fought with the French and
the Caribs and learned the real art of warfare that made
possible his marvellous retreat at Coruña.
As we approached Castries, a large, white yacht came
up from over the horizon and slipped into the harbor. She
proved to be the Atinah -- belonging to Edouard
Rothschild and flying the French flag. She had bumped on
a reef south of Cuba and came here to coal before going
home to dock. A Norwegian tramp, probably owned by an
American company, stole around the south of the island
and came up behind me, a huge mass of ocean-going
utility, and swung into port after the yacht.
* Shortly after the
outbreak of the present war in Europe
the Vigie was fortified with guns brought over from
Martinique
and garrisoned in 1915 by a company of Canadian
soldiers.
An Englishman came out, relieved of coals she had
brought from Cardiff, her rusty sides high out of water,
the tips of her propeller making a white haystack under
her counter. The little coasting steamer, which had
saluted me two days before, bustled out of her home on
her daily run to Vieux Fort.
There was commerce in this port -- I had not been near
a steamer for two months. Before sailing into the harbor,
we made an inquisitive tack offshore in order to have a
peep at Martinique. There she lay -- a little to the
westward of Saint Lucia ; the arc was swinging back
and I should soon be in the Leeward islands. Distinct
against the haze of Martinique stood the famous Diamond
Rock and here, only six miles off, lay Pigeon Island,
lifting its head, a lion couchant with Fort Rodney in its
mane.
On the other tack we ran into the busy harbor. French,
English, and Norwegian flags were there. My little
ensign, no larger than a bandana handkerchief, was all
that represented the United States in this large company.
But the Yakaboo flitted past her overgrown children --
for after all the canoe is the mother of them all -- to a
quiet corner that showed no change since the advent of
steam.
I had decided to spend some time in Castries --
looking into the past of a certain lady. I ought to make
the type appear shamefaced as I write this, but you
already know who the lady is, or was, and that she has
been dead nearly a century and her past was a romance.
There comes an indefinable sense of peace and quiet when
one sails into a secure and almost landlocked harbor such
as the carénage of Castries, but I did not know
that I was only sailing from the vicissitudes of the
Caribbean to the uncertainties of a veritable sea of
hearsay concerning Josephine.
For instance, there was an old negro who had seen the
Empress in Castries when a little child. Whether he was
the little child, or she was the little child, I do not
know -- perhaps it was Castries that was the little
child. He was brought to me one day as I stood in the
street chatting with one of the merchants of the
town.
"Undoubtedly old," I said to my friend, as one would
comment upon a piece of furniture. He seemed a youth
compared with some of our old Southern darkies, shriveled
and cotton-tufted.
"Quel âge?' I yelled at him, for he was
somewhat deaf.
"Cent onze e' sep' s'mains," came the answer. One
hundred and eleven years and seven weeks! If I had not
caught him unawares he might have given the days and
hours.
But his age was not so remarkable as his memory. He
remembered having seen Josephine on the streets and
especially at the time when she left Saint Lucia for
Martinique on her way to France to marry Beauharnais.
There was no doubting that honest old face and there was
nothing but admiration for a memory that reached back not
only to youth and childhood, but even to prenatal
existence. He was born two years after Josephine had paid
her last visit to these islands! I took his photograph
and paid him a shilling, which shows that a wonderful
memory is nothing if not a commercial asset.
My papers from St. George's, which had been
viséd from port to port would serve me no longer
since I was now leaving for Martinique, which was French.
One morning I walked into the office of the French
consul, who, it seemed to me, was suspiciously suave and
gracious. The idea of traveling about in a boat of less
than a quarter of a ton was very amusing. He filled in
the blanks of an impressive document, which I stuck in my
pocket. When I asked the amount of the fee he said,
"Twenty francs." "Whew!" I muttered to myself, "no wonder
he was so blasted polite."
Out past the Vigie and I was happy again. One is
always glad to run into port, but the voyager is doubly
glad to leave it again. There are countless petty
annoyances on shore that one never meets on the broad
seas. I often worry about the weather, but most of that
worry is done when I am ashore. As soon as I stepped into
the canoe that morning I felt that I was leaving my small
troubles on the stone quay, whimpering like a pack of
forlorn dogs. I should lose sight of them and the quay as
soon as I rounded the Vigie.
After sailing through two rain squalls and making an
investigating tack under Pigeon Island, I headed for the
beach of the village of Gros-Islet, for I had business
there. I wanted to see Père Remaud and examine
some of the parish signatures. As I beached the canoe,
Henry Belmar, a fine young colonial Englishman, came
through the crowd of natives to meet me. He was riding
through Gros-Islet on governmental duties, had seen me in
the bay, and had ordered food at one of the houses in the
town. The thoughtful hospitality of the colonial
Englishman has often made me think upon the manner in
which we too often treat the stranger who comes to our
shores. If he is outré, we lionize him and the
women make a freak of him. If he is of our own kind, we
let him shift for himself. We drank our febrifuge with
the usual "chin-chin," and after luncheon set out for the
house of Père Remaud.
The priest was a young man, full of strength and
vigor, much, I thought, as Père Labat would have
been had we known him in our age. Père Remaud was
interested in the things of the world. He lived for his
parish, read, shot ramiers (pigeons), and could talk
intimately on the politics of my own country. While I had
been eating with Belmar, the priest had been down to the
beach to see my canoe and at the moment when we arrived
he was hastily turning the leaves of a French sporting
catalogue to see whether he might discover to just what
species the Yakaboo belonged -- much as he would attempt
to classify a strange flower which he had found in the
hills of his parish.
I spent the afternoon with him, looking over the old
parish records. But for the faded paper on which they
stood out in bold lines, the letters and signatures might
have been written yesterday. There was the signature of
Louis Raphael Martin, a planter of Saint Lucia, who had
known Josephine here and had been received by her at
Malmaison in France. There was that of Auguste Hosten
under the date of 1810, who, Frédéric
Masson says, loaned a large sum of money to Josephine at
the time of the Revolution, when the guillotine had taken
her first husband and before she met Napoleon.
We talked, and I made many notes during the long
afternoon till at last the yellow sunshine gave warning
that I must leave. Père Remaud came down to the
beach with me and as we heeled to the evening breeze I
heard his last "Bon voyage" above the babble of the
natives.
The same puff that carried the last adieux of
Père Remaud helped us across the white sandy floor
of the bay and left us, close to the shores of Pigeon
Island. Three whaleboats were lying on the beach and as I
stepped ashore their crews came straggling down to meet
me. I found that the man in command of the station was
Napoleon Olivier of Bequia, a brother of José at
Caille, and I was again in my whaling days of the
Grenadines. I was soon as far from Josephine and
Père Remaud as the twentieth century is from the
eighteenth -- but not for long. Accompanied by the two
sons of Olivier, I climbed to the famous old fort, now
called "Rodney," where that admiral, second only to
Nelson, watched for the French fleet to come out of their
hiding in the bay of Fort Royal (now Fort de France),
thirty miles to the north, in Martinique. His own fleet
lay below him in the Saint Croix roads, like impatient
hounds tugging at their leashes, eager to be in chase of
their quarry.
The French at last slipped out on the night of April
8th, 1782, the news of their departure being signaled to
Rodney by means of a chain of English lookout ships.
Rodney was immediately on their heels and on the 12th met
the French in the Dominica channel, where he fought the
battle of "The Saints."
The fort itself is scarcely more than a rampart with a
powder magazine on the east side and a flagstaff stepping
in the center. There were no guns left and the trees,
growing out of the pavement, told of long years of
disuse. The sun had dropped below the ridge of the island
as we scrambled down again through long rank grass,
waist-high, and through a small dark grove of trees,
among which there were several tombs of officers, their
inscriptions still decipherable, the last narrow earthly
homes of men who had died while stationed here, not from
the bullets of the French, but from the insidious attack
of that enemy which they knew not -- the mosquito.
I cooked my supper with the whalemen in the ruins of
the old barracks. A rain tank, still intact from the time
of the occupation, furnished water and I was soon yarning
with Olivier over the bubbling pots. The season had been
a bad one, only one small whale had been caught. One of
the best harpooners was lying sick with fever in
Gros-Islet, and the whole outfit was in a state of black
dejection.
Poor Olivier! He was not only doomed to lose his
harpooner, for three years later when I sailed my
schooner into the quiet haven of Bequia he came aboard
and, sitting on the top step of the companionway, he told
me with tears in his eyes that one of his sons, who had
taken me up to the fort, had died of fever shortly after
I had left Pigeon Island. He had no photograph to
remember his son by, but he remembered that I had taken a
snapshot on the rampart -- would I give him a print?
Supper over, we put up impromptu tents in the long,
soft grass above the beach where the boats lay, for the
ruins, they said, were full of fleas. It may have been
fleas or it may have been superstition that inhabited the
barracks with jumbies. The tents were impromptu, old
sloop sails thrown over the masts of the whaleboats. One
end of the masts rested on the ground while the other was
supported by crossed oars lashed together about seven
feet above ground. Had these shelters not been put up
after sunset and taken down before sunrise I might have
had an interesting photograph of shipwrecked mariners. I
crawled in with Olivier, for it would save me the work of
pitching my own tent. I was awakened by the chilly
drizzle of a morning squall.
As I got up and shook myself at sunrise -- that is
5 :51 on that particular day -- (the sun did not
rise for us until sometime later, when he edged above the
Morne du Cap on Saint Lucia), the weather did not look
promising. Had it been the fifth day of the first quarter
I would not have started for Martinique, but it was the
fifth of the second, which had shown a lamb-like
disposition, and there were two days of it left -- I was
on the safe side. The indications were for rain rather
than wind and I decided to take the chance. Olivier was a
bit doubtful.
I cooked my breakfast with the men in the barracks,
dragged my canoe down to the water's edge and watched the
weather. At eight o'clock, the rain having ceased, I bade
good-bye to the whalers, who had decided not to try for
humpbacks that day, and was off. As we sailed out through
the reefs by Burgot Rocks the heavy surf gave warning
that there would be plenty of wind outside. Once clear of
Saint Lucia I laid my course for Diamond Rock, a good six
points off the wind.
What a comfort it was to ease my sheets a bit and to
know that if the current began to take me to leeward I
could make it up by working closer to windward. Those
extra points were like a separate bank account laid up
for a rainy day.
The canoe enjoyed this work. She fairly flew, sliding
into the deep troughs and climbing the tall seas in long
diagonals. In half an hour Saint Lucia behind me was
completely hidden by rain clouds and so was Martinique
ahead. The two islands seemed to have wrapped themselves
in their vaporous blankets in high dudgeon, like a couple
of Indian bucks who have failed to wheedle whisky out of
a passing tourist. Fearful lest the weather might break
and come up from the southwest, I kept a constant watch
on the procession of the trade clouds in the northeast,
ready to come about with the first weakening of the
wind.
Afraid? not exactly -- but cautious. The Yakaboo drove
on like the sturdy little animal that she was. We flow
knew each other so well that we did not even bother to
head into the breaking seas, except the very large ones.
Some of them we could roll under and slip by. Others came
aboard and at times I was waist deep in water and foam,
sitting on the deck to windward, my feet braced in the
cockpit under the opposite coaming. If there had not been
the danger of filling her sails with water, I could have
made the mainsheet fast for she practically sailed
herself. Between deluges, I bailed out the cockpit with a
calabash.
Once in a while she would hang her head and then I
hove-to to bail out the forward compartment with a
sponge. The exhilaration of the Saint Vincent channel was
nothing compared to this. The water was warm and my
constant ducking was not unpleasant. I thought I could
feel a tingle in the region of my pre-evolute
gills.
It may seem strange that in these channel runs where
the trade blew strong, the force of the wind never seemed
to bother the canoe. Although it was usually blowing
fully twenty miles an hour and often twenty-five, I was
obliged to reef my sails but four times on the whole
cruise ; on the run to Dominica, when the wind was
very strong ; again, under the lee of
Dominica ; in the run to Guadeloupe, when the canoe
was going too fast in a following sea, and, for the same
reason, on my run to Saba. I have often carried full sail
when a large sloop has been obliged to reef.
The reason for this is that the wind close to the
surface of water, broken up into ridges from three to
eight feet in height, is considerably retarded and the
stratum through which the low rig of the Yakaboo moved
was not traveling at a rate of more than three-fourths
the actual velocity of the free wind. Upon approaching
land, where the seas began to diminish in size and before
I had reached the influence of the down draft from the
mountains, I could always feel a slight but definite
increase in the force of the wind.
Sailing as I did -- seated only a few inches above the
water -- I had an excellent Opportunity to observe the
flying fish which rose almost continually from under the
bow of the canoe. Although they were smaller than those I
have seen in the channels off the California coast --
they were seldom more than about nine inches long --
their flight did not seem to be appreciably shorter.
Their speed in the water immediately before they emerge
must be terrific for they come out as though shot from a
submarine catapult ; their gossamer wings, vibrating
from the translated motion of the powerful tail, make the
deception of flight most real.
The flight is in effect the act of soaring with the
body at an angle of from ten to fifteen degrees with the
horizontal. The wings are close to the head and the lower
part of the body often passes through the crest of a wave
from time to time when the tail seems to give an impetus
to the decreasing speed of the flight. This, however, may
be an illusion, due to the dropping away of the wave,
which might thus give the fish the appearance of rising
up from the water. I have spent many hours watching these
singular fish and, while there can be no doubt that they
do not actually fly, it seems almost incredible that a
fish can hurl itself from the Water with sufficient force
to rise to a height of twenty or more feet and soar for a
distance of from three to four hundred feet -- perhaps
farther.
The land ahead had shaken off its cloud blanket and
was now rapidly defining itself, for this channel was
shorter than the last one and my old enemy, the lee tide,
had been scarcely perceptible. As I held the canoe up for
"Diamond Rock," I again noticed the decided veering of
the wind to the south'ard, and from time to time I had to
ease off my sheets till the canoe was running well off in
a beam sea that moderated as I approached land. The sky,
which had been well clouded during most of the run,
opened at a fortunate moment while I hove-to, stood up in
the cockpit, and took a photograph of the famous Rock.
There was no hope of landing in that run of sea and I had
to be content with a hasty survey of the Rock as the
canoe bobbed up and down, her nose into the wind.
Were I writing this narrative true to events, I should
have no time to describe the Rock and relate a bit of its
history for I had scarcely time to stow my camera when a
squall came chasing down on my heels. I hastily raised
the mainsail and ran "brad aft," as the harpooner Bynoe
would say, to get plenty of sea room. When the squall did
catch us, we hove-to with the jib safely stowed and the
mainsail securely lashed so that the wind could not get
its fingers into it, and with the sturdy little mizzen
dutifully holding the canoe into the wind.
You shall have the story now while I am sitting in the
cockpit -- doing nothing but watch the Rock disappear in
the mist to windward, while the Yakaboo is backing off
gracefully at a rate of four miles an hour.
Diamond Rock rises in the shape of a dome to a height
of five hundred and seventy feet, a mile distant from the
Martinique shore. In 1804, when the English and French
were making their last fight for the supremacy of the
Caribbean, Admiral Hood laid the H. M. S. Centaur close
under the lee of the Rock, put kedges out to sea, and ran
lines to the shore. Fortunately, calm weather aided the
Admiral in his operations and he was able to hoist three
long 24s and two 18s to the top of the Rock where hasty
fortifications were built. Here Lieutenant Maurice, with
one hundred and twenty men, harassed the French
fleet.
The Rock was named H. M. S. Diamond Rock and for
sixteen months this stationary man-of-war held out
against the French, who had two 74s, a corvette, a
schooner, and eleven gunboats. Lack of food finally
caused these gallant men to surrender and so great was
the admiration of the French governor, the Marquise de
Bouillé, that he treated them as his guests at
Fort Royal (Fort de France), till the proper exchanges
could be made. By a strange coincidence, this same
Maurice, who had become a captain, in 1811 captured the
island of Anholt and successfully held it against the
Danes.
While I have been yarning to you about Diamond Rock, I
have also partaken of my frugal sea-luncheon of coconut,
pilot bread, and chocolate. I believe, just to make up
for the nastiness of the weather, I raided my larder
under the cockpit floor to the extent of a small can of
potted meat, and I remember saving the empty tin till I
was well in shore, for I did not care to excite the
curiosity of a chance shark that might be passing by.
The squall was a mixture of wind and spiteful rain and
I thought of the Yakaboo as akin to the chimney sweep's
donkey in "Water Babies." For an hour it blew hard and
then let up as quickly as it had come, the sea subsiding
as if by magic. I found that we were well oft shore
nearly due west of Cape Solomon, four miles from the
point where the squall had picked me up. Shaping our
course past the cape, we soon ran into the calm of the
picturesque bay of Fort de France.
Tucked well back from the sea, on the northern shore
of the bay, lay the capital of the island. The afternoon
was in its decline and the level rays of the sun striking
into the low rain clouds that hung over the land threw a
golden light on the town and hills, making it a
yellow-skied picture by an old Dutch master. The effect
of days gone by was heightened by the presence of a large
square-rigger that lay in the anchorage with her sails
brailed up to dry after the rain. No steamer was there to
mar the illusion -- the picture was not modern.
As I rowed closer to the town I turned from time to
time to see what changes were going on behind my back. On
a bluff close aboard were the pretty homes of a villa
quarter and over one the tricolor of France proclaimed
the governor's house. Beyond was a row of warehouses
fronting the sea and beyond these, as though behind a
bulwark, rose the cathedral steeple. At the far end of
the row of warehouses a long landing jetty ran out at
right angles to the water front. Still farther to the
eastward Fort St. Louis lay out into the harbor jealously
guarding the carénage behind it. At the water's
edge and not far from the shore end of the jetty was a
building with the revenue flag over it and for this I
shaped my course.
As I neared the government landing the harbormaster's
boat came out with its dusky crew of douanes (customs
officers), wearing blue and white-banded jerseys and the
French helmet of the tropics, with its brim drooped in
back to protect the nape of the neck. I passed my papers
to them and started to follow. The man in the stern, who
now held my expensive bill of health, waved me back.
"Jettez votre ancre!"
I answered that I carried no anchor and they pulled
away as from a pest.
"Restez la!" he yelled, pointing indefinitely out into
the middle of the bay. The crew landed their officer and
then rowed out again, placing themselves between me and
the shore. Half an hour passed ; I could see the
people of the town trickle down through the streets and
gather along the water front. Then I began to notice that
there was something wrong with the Yakaboo. She was tired
and woman-like she gave way -- not to tears, but the
reverse. She leaked. She had had a hard day of it and
wanted to sit down somewhere ; the bottom of the
harbor being the nearest place, she started for that. A
seam must have opened on the run across and I had to
bail.
But what on earth were those fellows doing with my
bill of health and why on earth did they not allow me to
come ashore? Between spells of bailing I took up my oars
and started to circumnavigate the douanes, but they were
inshore of me and had the advantage. The sun sank lower
and the crowd along shore became denser. Finally it
dawned upon me. My expensive bill of health was dated the
day before and the customs officers were trying to guess
what I had been doing the day before and where I had been
the previous night. Why they did not ask me directly I do
not know, and what they actually thought and said to each
other I never heard. That they took me for some sort of
spy I am certain.
Two weeks in quarantine began to loom up as a vivid
possibility. I then remembered that "Monty" at Kingstown
had given me a letter to his brother-in-law, a merchant
by the name of Richaud, who lived in Fort de France. The
next move was to get the letter to Richaud -- he might be
standing in that crowd on the jetty. So I took the letter
out of my portfolio and put it in my pocket where it
would be handy. Then I gave the Yakaboo a final
sponge-out and started to pull at a smart pace away from
the jetty. The crew in the harbormaster's boat swallowed
the bait and quickly headed me off.
In a flash I yanked the canoe about and rowed for the
jetty, under full steam, at the same time yelling over my
shoulder for Monsieur Richaud. Luck was with me. There
was a movement in the crowd and a little man was pushed
to the outer edge like the stone out of a prune. In a
jiffy I was alongside and the letter was in his hands.
The baffled douanes, who had turned by this time and were
after me full tilt, nosed me away from the jetty, while I
lay oft, softly whistling "Yankee Doodle." This seemed to
take with the crowd and they applauded. They were not in
sympathy with douanes -- few West Indians are, for they
are all fond of smuggling.
Whether it was Monty's letter backed by the pull of
Monsieur Richaud, who seemed to be a man of some
importance, or whether the officials decided to call it a
day and to go home, I don't know, but I was at last
beckoned to come ashore and just in time, for the Yakaboo
sank with a gurgle of relief in the soft ooze on the
beach. Before I knew what was going on, my whole outfit
was bundled into the customs office to undergo the
inspection of the officials. Even the canoe was bailed
out and carried into the barracks, where she rested on
the floor by the side of a gunrack filled with cumbersome
St. Étienne rifles. There being no Bible handy I
placed my hand on the next most holy thing, the bosom of
my shirt, and swore that after this I would cruise in
seas more homogeneous as to the nationality of their
islands. While this silent ceremony was going on, the
douanes looked at me in an awed way and one of them
muttered "Fou" (crazy). He was probably right.
But Monsieur Richaud was there and he introduced
himself to me. He had been expecting me for some time, he
said, and I explained as best I could -- it was mental
agony to try to recall from a musty memory words that I
had not used for ten years or more -- that I had spent
some time with the Caribs in Saint Vincent and some time
in Saint Lucia, since I had left "Monty." Monsieur was a
little, jolly round-faced Frenchman with the prosperous
air of a business man of some consequence. He was reputed
to be one of the rich men of Fort de France. Would I
bestow upon him the honor of dining with him at his
house? I would bestow that honor. We said "au revoir" to
the douanes and stepped out into the street.
CHAPTER VIII.
MARTINIQUE -- FORT DE FRANCE.
IT WAS DARK and it was raining. My clothes were
already wet and I sloshed along the narrow sidewalks
behind the little man like a dripping Newfoundland dog.
His wife was ill, he said, but he wished to at least give
me a dinner, a change of clothes and then find me a
lodging place. I had become so used to wet clothing that
I forgot to bring my dry duds. I could see little of the
town as we walked along the dark streets, but the
impression was that of a small city -- larger than any I
had yet seen in these islands. At our elbows was a
monotonous unbroken wall of house fronts with closed
doors and jalousied windows, which occasionally gave a
faint gleam of light. Presently my friend stopped in
front of one of the doors and pushed it in. We stepped
into a sort of wide corridor at the farther end of which
was another door through which we passed into my friend's
house. The house in reality had two fronts, one on the
street and this which faced on a sort of patio which
separated it from the kitchen and servants' quarters. I
made this hasty survey as the master gave some orders in
patois to a large negress, whose attention was fixed on
my bedraggled figure, which gave the impression of having
but lately been fished out of the sea.
First of all there was that enjoyable little liquid
ceremony, "a votre santé," in which I rose in the
estimation of mine host upon denying allegiance to "wisky
soda." This should be further proof that I was no English
spy at least. Then I was led upstairs to the guest room
which Monsieur was now occupying. Monsieur was short and
beamy, while my build was of the reverse order, and the
result of the change of dry clothes which I put on was
ludicrous -- but I was dry and comfortable, which was the
main thing. It was pleasant to know that I could now sit
down in a comfortable chair without leaving a lasting
salt stain behind me, pink-dyed from the color which was
continually running from the lining of my coat. What
little dignity to which I may lay claim, took wing at the
sight of a foot of brown paw and forearm dangling from
the sleeve of the coat. In like manner the trousers
withdrew to a discreet distance from my feet and hung in
desperate puckers around my middle.
Thus arrayed I was ushered into the presence of Madame
Richaud, who lay recovering from an attack of fever in an
immense four-poster. I paid my respects, assured her of
the good health and well-being of her brother, and bowing
with as much grace as possible, I followed my host to the
drawing room.
The door through which we had passed from the street
to the house of Monsieur Richaud was what one might call
a general utility door, used by the master of the house
on all ordinary occasions and by the servants and
tradespeople. This door, as I have said, opened into a
sort of corridor or antechamber through which one had to
pass before gaining access to the house proper. There
was, however, another street door, which opened from the
sidewalk directly into the parlor or living room, where I
now sat with my friend. This gives an uncomfortable
feeling of intimacy with the street -- in a step one
moves from the living room to the sidewalk. It made me
think of one of the smaller canals of Venice, where I had
seen an urchin dive from a front window into the street.
On either side of this door were two windows, lacking
glass, with jalousies between the interstices of which I
could now and then see the whites of peeking eyes.
It is in the nature of these people to be fond of
street life and during my stay in Fort de France I
noticed that the little balconies, with long French
windows opening upon them, which projected from the
second stories, were occupied most of the time. The
aspect of the glaring white and yellow houses, monotonous
as the sheer walls of the Wallibu Dry River, could never
be so pleasing as the green courtyards in the rear,
viewed from large airy galleries. It was just the drift
of the street, a casual word now and then and a few
exchanges with neighbors similarly occupied.
As we talked, the thought came to me that there was at
least one advantage to this parlor street door -- it was
handy for funerals. Strange to say, I saw such a room put
to just this use the very next day. The corpse was laid
in state in the parlor and the doors were wide open so
that any one, who wished, might enter in and look. There
is, of course, some degree of common sense in this, for
the rest of the house being practically cut off, the
family need not be disturbed by the entrance of numerous
friends, some of whom may not alone be satisfied in
viewing the corpse, but take a morbid delight in viewing
the grief of others.
But mall this had little to do with the dinner which
was announced from the door of the adjoining dining room.
Monsieur Richaud's two children, a boy and a girl in that
nondescript age which precedes the bachfisch, now put in
their appearance, the girl proudly taking the place of
her mother at the head of the table. The dinner was
excellent, but what I ate I did not remember even long
enough to write in my note-book the next day, for while I
was mechanically eating a soup that was delicious, I
could give no specific thought to it, but must
concentrate my entire attention to fetching up those few
French words which were resting in the misty depths of my
mind as in the muddy bottom of a well. Having "dove up"
those words, I used them in a conversation which, while
it was understood by Monsieur Richaud, afforded
considerable amusement to the children. But the little
Frenchman fared no better. Wishing to impress me with his
familiarity with the English language he described the
beauties of the northern coast of Martinique. He came to
a fitting climax when he told of a river -- "w'ich arrive
at zee sea by casharettes."
When the substantial part of the meal was over, a wash
basin, soap and towel were passed around -- satisfactory
if not aesthetic -- the three articles reminding me of
their relations on the back stoop of a western farmhouse.
After this, the fruit, which in this case was mango. I
will not repeat the ponderous witticism regarding the
mango and the bathtub. I have often speculated on this
joke, however, and have almost come to the conclusion
that it was invented first and the fruit discovered
afterward. I can imagine Captain Cook suddenly starting
up and slapping his thigh. "What ho!" he shouts, "I have
thought up a most excellent joke, but I must find a fruit
to fit it." And so he sets forth, discovers the mango and
circumnavigates the globe.
However, we ate mangoes and our fingers became messy.
As I was looking for some place to rest my hands where
they would do the least damage to table linen, the
negress, who had been serving us, brought in four plates
with large finger bowls on them. There was tepid water in
the bowls and by their sides were small beakers about the
size of bird-baths. First we took up the beakers, filled
them with water from the bowls and set them aside. Then
we washed our finger tips in the bowls and finally dipped
them in the clean water in the beakers and wiped our
lips, an aesthetic proceeding which averaged the use of
the wash basin and the soap. This rite concluded, the
beaker was upset in the bowl -- a signal that the dinner
was over.
Thus dried, fed and doubly cleansed, my sum of content
lacked only tobacco and a bed. They raise their own
tobacco in Martinique -- Tabac de Martinique -- and that
it is pure is where praise halts and turns her back. As
for strength -- I called it Tabac de Diable. I have
shaved the festive plug and smoked the black twist that
resembled a smoked herring from the time of the Salem
witches, but these are as corn silk to the Tabac de
Martinique. I had finished my supply of tobacco from home
and now, forced to use the weed of Martinique, I "learned
to love it." There was nothing else to do. It reminded me
of the tenderfoot who leaned up against a white pine bar
in the Far West and asked for a mint julep -- "Well
frappéd." As the barkeeper produced a tumbler and
a bottle he said, "You'll have three fingers of this bug
juice and YOU'LL LOVE IT."
But the Tabac de Diable served me a good turn. Half a
year later, in the cozy tap room of the Fitzwilliam
Tavern, I incautiously left a partly smoked cigar within
the reach of a practical joker, who, taking advantage of
my preoccupation in a book, watched the cigar go out and
then with the aid of a pin inserted a piece of elastic
band into the end of the cigar. I did not notice the
anticipation of a bit of fun on the faces of the men who
had come from an uninteresting game of bridge in another
room. I relit the cigar and resumed the smoking of it,
still deeply engrossed in my book. I remembered later
that one by one the jokers had left the room with silent
tread as if in the presence of the dead. For once I was
alone in the room and I had the fireplace to myself. I
finished the cigar and threw the stump into the fire. It
was the Tabac de Diable that had inoculated me and for
some time after I left Martinique I found that I could
smoke almost anything that was at all porous and would
burn if an indraft was applied to it. But I did not enjoy
it that first time when Monsieur Richaud handed me a
Martinique cigar.
There now remained the last want -- a bed -- and my
friend guessed this for I nearly fell asleep over his
cigar.
He led me out into the deserted streets lighted by a
faint starlight and still shining from the rain which had
let up. We turned into one of the main thoroughfares at
the end of which blazed an electric light, yellow, like
the moon rising through a mist. Here flourished the
"Grand Hôtel de l'Eurôpe," a name, I believe,
as legion as Smith. I fully expect, after crossing my
last channel, the Styx, to find a sign on the other shore
thus -- "Grand Hôtel de l'Eurôpe -- Coolest
Spot in Hades -- Asbestos Linen -- Sight Seeing Auto
Hell/speed leaves at 10 A.M. -- Choice New Consignment of
Magnates seen at Hard Labor."
My tired senses made scant note of the marble-floored
room, the click of the billiard balls, and the
questioning glances of the wasp-betrousered French
officers, and I bade good night to my host, who had
vouched for my harmlessness and left me in charge of the
clerk.
The kaleidoscope day came to an end as I crawled under
the mosquito bar of an immense four-poster, in a room on
the premièr étage, and dove between the
sheets with a grunt of satisfaction.
At first I thought it was the love song of a mosquito,
but as I began to awaken the sound resolved itself into
the thin blare of a trumpet-call and I wondered where I
was. My eyes, directed at the ceiling when I opened them,
caught the rays of the morning sun, sifted through the
jalousies and striking the gauze canopy over me in bands
of moted light. The trumpet sounded again -- this time
almost under my window -- and stretching out of bed like
a snail from its shell, I peeked through the vanes of the
jalousie and saw a company of soldiers returning from
their morning drill. There was a delicious novelty about
it all that made me feel absolutely carefree, and, as I
thought of the Yakaboo and her precious outfit, I hoped
that they, as well as I, had rested in the customs
station with its antiquated St. Étienne rifles for
company. I hoped that there had been no quarrel between
my Austrian gun and the Frenchmen and that my little
British rifle had not flaunted the Union Jack in their
faces. I was in that coma of carelessness when if an
earthquake had come to crush out my life with the falling
of the ponderous walls about me, I would have reproved it
with the dying words, "Oh, pshaw, why didn't you wait
till I had finished my cruise?" This feeling is worth
traveling to the ends of the earth to experience.
A knock on the door brought forth a hasty "Entrez" as
I slid back between the sheets. An aged negress brought
in a small pot of coffee and a pitcher of hot milk which
I found to my horror would have to stay my hunger until
the hour of déjeuner at eleven.
Later, another knock ushered in my clothes from
Monsieur Richaud, already washed and dried. My precious
shirt looked like a miserable piece of bunting after a
rainy Fourth of July, faded and color-run. I dressed and
sallied forth to investigate the town.
Fort de France was as new and strange to me as St.
George's had been and far more interesting. An impending
week of rainy weather decided for me and I made up my
mind to spend that week here. Until I was ready to put to
sea again and sail for Dominica I could not take my
outfit away from the customs office. Camping along shore,
then, was out of the question. There was no alternative
for me than to become for the time a part of the life of
the town. Curiously enough, I find that one passes
through various phases during the first few days in a new
town or country. At first there is the novelty of the
place which appeals to one. This is followed by a period
of restlessness -- the first blush of novelty has worn
off and one comes almost to the point of hating the
place. It is like the European tourist who rushes upon a
town, gorges himself with what pictures and sights are
easily accessible and then in a fit of surfeit hates the
thought of the rich optical food before him. But then
comes the third stage, which lasts indefinitely, when the
spirit of the town makes itself felt and one begins to
see through the thin veneer of first impressions and to
make friends. Those first impressions -- unless they are
very striking -- vanish little by little till one comes
to regard the place more or less with the eyes of the
native. After all, this whole process is both natural and
human. It is during the last stage (granting always that
the town or country has any interest for one at all) that
the residence in all out of the way places is brought
about of stray Englishmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen and in
more recent years Americans. One commonly hears the
admission, "I didn't care for the place at all at first
but somehow I became fond of it and here I am -- let's
see, it's blank years now."
My first care was for my outfit which I was allowed to
overhaul and put in order in the barracks room. My
portfolio and camera I could take with me to the hotel,
but the latter was of no use for my films became fogged
from the excessive moisture of a rainy week and when I
did try to make an exposure it was only of some
conventional subject. I could not wander at random from
the confines of the town nor edge near the picturesque
carénage in back of Fort St. Louis where there is
an important coaling station and repair shop without
being shadowed by some private apparently detailed for
the purpose. While overhauling my outfit I could see that
every bag had been carefully searched -- nothing, of
course, was missing. Through some sort of feigned
misunderstanding I was unable to get back my expensive
bill of health -- perhaps they thought I might alter the
date and use it in Guadeloupe (above Dominica), the next
French island. I had hoped to bluff the harbor-master at
Dominica, but with my French bill of health gone, I could
not do otherwise than obtain a new paper for Dominica --
the officials saw to that -- and it was just as well in
the end for I met with the same officiousness that
greeted Captain Slocum when I arrived at Roseau.
It had been raining and the deep, old-world gutters
were full, miniature canals in which the broken shell of
a coconut might be seen sailing down to the sea like the
egg shell of Hans Christian Andersen. Apparently most of
the refuse of the town is carried off in these gutters.
But the canal gutters serve another purpose -- they wash
the feet of the country people. One sees a woman whose
muddy or dusty feet proclaim her to be from the country,
walking into town with a monstrous burden on her head.
She will suddenly stop on the edge of the sidewalk and
balance on one foot while she carefully lowers the other
into the running water of the gutter. She may at the same
time be passing the time o' day with some approaching
acquaintance half a block away. Their conversation seems
to have a universal focus for any distance under a
quarter of a mile -- the intensity is the same for three
feet or a block.
Having washed her right foot with the nonchalance of a
tightrope walker, she goes on her way till she makes such
a turning as will bring her left foot alongside the
gutter, and she proceeds as before.
It was usually in the afternoon that I saw that most
picturesque sang mêle, the creole of Martinique,
unaffected by the so-called advance of civilization,
wearing the dress of watered silk and the heavy gold
ornaments, with just that faint trace of interesting
barbarity that goes with the generous features, the
wide-spread eyes and the blue-black hair. She is a
reminder of creole days of French Louisiana -- the
coarser progenitor of our so-called "creole." I could see
that most of these women were married, by the sign of the
madras qualandi which is in reality a silk bandana tied
on the head turban-wise, one corner knotted and stuck
upright above the forehead like a feather. The unmarried
women wear the madras in the usual manner, that is,
without the knotted corner upright.
That these women are beautiful there is no
denying ; the skin though it may be dark is very
clear and the eyes give a frank open expression and by
reason of their position seem to diminish what African
coarseness may have been left in the nose. The nose may
be flattish and a bit heavy but the broad, even high
forehead, wide-spread eyes and perfect teeth counteract
this effect so that it is hardly noticeable. One finds
these people a delightful contrast to the rawboned creole
of the English colonies with her male-like figure and
eccentricities of hair, nose, lips, hands and feet.
There was a refreshing spirit of enterprise -- we get
the word from the French -- and of varied interests that
were a relief after having seen the "live and bear it"
spirit of the English islands. The people of Martinique
are industrious and they are happy -- the one naturally
follows the other. In the market I found nearly all the
vegetables of the temperate climate besides those of the
tropics. They are now extensively growing the vanilla
bean and the Liberian coffee is excellent. The wines
which they import from France are inexpensive. In
drinking the claret they dilute it with water which is
the French custom and is as it should be. One might live
very comfortably in Fort de France. There were electric
lights and book stores where one could buy the current
French magazines -- illustrated, humorous and naughty. I
bought several. There was just one step in their
enterprise which I did not appreciate and that was the
cultivating of home-grown tobacco -- Tabac de Diable.
My walks about town were for the most part sallies
from the hotel during intermissions between showers, for
it rained almost continually for the entire week. These
sallies I alternated with periods of writing in the quiet
little cabaret where an occasional acquaintance would sit
down for a chat, my French taking courage from day to day
like an incipient moustache. I usually occupied a
marble-topped table under an open window by which bobbed
the heads of passersby.
What front the Hôtel de l'Eurôpe boasts,
faces toward the savanna in the middle of which stands
the statue of the Empress Josephine. Here she stands,
guarded by a high iron fence and surrounded by seven tall
palms, their tops, towering to a lofty coronet, above her
head, seemed to claim her after all as a child of the
West Indies. She is looking pensively across the bay
towards Trois Îlets where she may or may not have
been born and where so many sentimental steamer-deck
authorities on the West Indies may or may not have made
pilgrimages to the parish church and perhaps to the ruins
of the La Pagerie estate. That she spent a considerable
part of her West Indian days in Saint Lucia there can be
no doubt and I will say for the benefit of the
steamer-deck authorities that there is a very strong
likelihood that she was born in that island. Was it some
ironical whim that tempted the sculptor to impart a
wistfulness in her face which seemed to carry her
thoughts far beyond Trois Îlets and across the
channel to the little plantation on the Morne Paix-Bouche
and perhaps still farther, along that half mythical
chemin de la Longue Chasse, which I discovered some time
later on an old map of Saint Lucia, leading from the
Dauphin quarter down to Souffrière? I have often
wondered whether it was mere chance that impelled the
sculptor to express that sign of parturient womanhood for
which Napoleon longed and the lack of which caused one of
the most pathetic partings in history.
One morning I was honored by a call from the clerk of
the hotel. A delegation from the Union Sportive
Martiniquaise et Touring Club Antillais wished to wait
upon me at four o'clock in the afternoon -- would I
receive them? At four, then, while I was sitting at my
table in the cabaret, the delegation of four came, headed
by a fiery little man of dark hue -- but a thorough
Frenchman. His name was Waddy and I came to like him very
much. The committee was very much embarrassed as a whole
and individually like timid schoolgirls, but if they
blushed it was like the desert violet -- unseen.
Would I do them the honor to be entertained for the
rest of the afternoon? I said that I should be delighted
-- and felt like a cheap edition of Dr. Cook. Waddy
explained to me that the club was very much interested in
my cruise and that it was their intention to become
familiar with the other islands of the Antilles. The
members of the club were for the most part eager to visit
the neighboring islands but they were too timid to trust
themselves to anything smaller than a steamer and while
there was more or less frequent communication by steamer
with Europe there was no inter-island service except by
sloop. My coming in a canoe had set them a wonderful
example, he told me.
We then walked to the jetty and were rowed out into
the harbor to visit a West Indian schooner of the type
that sailed from Martinique to Cayenne and upon which
Waddy hoped the Club as a whole could some day be induced
to cruise. She was an old Gloucester fisherman of about
eighty tons and perfectly safe (I assured Waddy) for the
use of the Touring Club Antillais. Having surveyed the
schooner we were rowed ashore where a carriage awaited
us. We then drove by a circuitous route, carefully
planned out beforehand to include the various sights of
note in the town, to the rented house in the Rue Amiral
de Gueydon where the Union Sportive Martiniquaise et
Touring Club Antillais thrived.
I was escorted to a room on the upper floor where the
Union Sportive Martiniquaise et Touring Club was already
gathered. To my intense embarrassment, the President of
the Union Sportive Martiniquaise et Touring proceeded to
read off a long speech from a paper in his hand. What he
said I managed to understand for the most part but it
concerns us little here. I replied to the members of the
Union Sportive Martiniquaise to the best of my ability --
in French -- and what I said I know but they did not
understand -- neither does that concern us in this
writing. After a pleasant stramash of verbal bouquets we
were served with refreshments which consisted of
champagne and lady fingers. Champagne is not a rare
beverage in the French islands, but I did not imagine
that I should see it used with the familiarity with which
the German treats his morning coffee ; I mean the
habit of dipping his toast in it. But dipping seemed the
custom and into the champagne went the lady fingers of
the Union Sportive, and mine. To me these people were
warmhearted and impulsive and as I got to know them,
thoroughly likable.
According to my almanac, it was Easter Sunday and I
almost felt ashamed of my morning cigarette as I left the
hotel for a little stroll before I should sit down to my
notes at the marble-topped table. But somehow or other I
thought I must be mistaken in the day. While there were
few people on the streets, to be sure, all the small
shops were open. I walked over to the covered market and
to my surprise I found that open also but most of the
business had already been transacted. But the large
stores, emporiums and magasins as they were called, were
closed. Then I passed a church and saw that it was
packed. Another church was packed. The priests were doing
a thriving business and I realized that perhaps after all
it was Easter Sunday. I did not know that with the ending
of Lent the people were having a last injection of the
antitoxin of religion to inoculate themselves from the
influence of Satan which was sure to follow on Monday.
And it was on account of Monday that the small shops and
the market were open, for everybody went to the country
for the Easter holidays, that is everybody who was
anybody, and they left the town to the proletariat. Those
who were fortunate enough to be able to spend the week in
the country must need get their last fresh supplies at
the market and the little necessities such as sweets,
tobacco and so on which were apt to be forgotten in the
press of Saturday could yet be bought on the way home
from church.
The next morning I found that the market was not open
and that all the shops were closed. So were the houses
for that matter -- everybody had made an early departure,
the devil was having his due and the town was left to the
rest. Various members of the Union Sportive played soccer
football beneath the unheeding eyes of the Empress, in
costumes that would have brought a smile to those marble
lips, I believe, could she have looked down at them. With
utter disregard for the likes or dislikes of one color
for another these members of the Union Sportive wore
jerseys of banded red, green and purple and with an equal
disregard for the fierce tropical heat, they raced over
the savanna, most of them with knickerbockers but some
with trousers, brailed up, if one might use the seagoing
term. But all the trousers did not calmly submit to this
seagoing treatment and generally slipped down as to the
left leg. (After some consideration I have come to the
conclusion that this phenomenon was on account of the
left leg usually being smaller than the right ;
hence the left trouser leg would be more prone to come
down.) One would see an energetic member of the Union
being carried rapidly after the ball by a pair of legs,
one decorously covered and the other exposed in all its
masculine shamelessness of pink underwear, livid "Y" of
garter, violent hose of Ethiopian choice and shoe of
generous dimension with long French toe, cutting arcs in
advance and bootstrap waving bravely behind. Even to
stand perfectly still in the shade of a tree to watch
this performance was heating and I moved on.
The unearthly squeal of a flute brought me across the
savanna to a shady grove where something was holding the
attention of a large crowd. The flute, I found, was only
one of four instruments held captive in a ring of
prancing wooden horses that circled on an iron track like
fish in a well. Each horse was mounted on an iron wheel
with pedals and those who could afford the necessary five
sous were allowed to circle for a time on this
merry-go-round, in mad delight, the power coming from
their own mahogany limbs which showed a like absence of
stockings in both sexes. The riders wore shoes and the
impression when they were in motion was that they also
wore stockings but when the ride came to an end the
illusion vanished. There was no central pivot, merely
this bracelet of horses fastened to each other and kept
from cavorting away over the savanna by the U-shaped
track wherein ran the wheels under their bellies. It was
a piece of engineering skill -- the evident pride of the
owner -- and being machinery it must needs be oiled. For
this purpose a boy wandered about in the confines of this
equine circle with a long-spouted oilcan in his hand. The
shrieking axles, while in motion, were guarded by the
pumping legs of the riders and therefore could not be
oiled ; there remained only one other part for
lubrication and that was the track. So the boy very
adroitly followed the wheel of some favorite steed with
the nose of the oilcan. But, you ask, why not oil the
axles at the end of the ride? Ah, but everybody is
resting then, the horses and the orchestra ; besides
the axles are no longer squeaking.
But let's have that delicious tidbit -- the orchestra.
After the flute-player, I name them in the order of their
effective strength ; there was the man who played on
the fiddle, which ages ago in these parts had slipped
from its customary place under the chin to the hollow of
the left shoulder. Then came the man who shook a gourd
filled with small pebbles and the drummer who beat on a
huge section of bamboo with two pieces of wood like chop
sticks. These last two instruments were extremely
effective, mainly because they were of African origin and
played upon by African experts. They were artists of
rhythm -- a metronome could have done no better. In the
hands of the drummer the bamboo echoed the jungle from
the light patter of rain drops on palm fronds to the
oncoming thunder-roll of an impending storm. From the
complacent beating of time this master lashed himself
into a fury as the orchestra periodically rose to a
climax under the spur of the flute-player. But it was the
gourd which held my eye longest. The hard surface of the
gourd, a calabash about eighteen inches long, was banded
with deep grooves across which the performer rubbed his
thumbnail, producing a noise that reminded me of the dry
grass of the prairies where the rattlesnake sounds his
note of warning. For an instant the gourd would be poised
above the head of the player to suddenly swoop, twirling
and whistling, through a fathom of orbit to fetch up for
a moment hugged in the curving form of its master where
it gurgled and hissed under the tickle of a thumbnail of
hideous power.
In the evening, after dinner, I would walk out across
the savanna to the still waters of the carénage --
I was living in such a civilized state that canoe cruise,
whalers, and Caribs seemed to have slipped back into the
remote haze of memory -- where an aged steamer,
clipper-stemmed and with a ship's counter, lay rusting at
her mooring, her square ports and rail with gingerbread
white-painted life-net, a delight to one who revels in a
past that is just near enough to be intimate. From the
carénage my walk would continue along the quay,
past the barracks of the naval station across the street
from which a tribe of cozy little cabarets blinked
cheerfully into the night through open doors and
windows.
Before long a quartet of French sailors, wearing Peter
Thompson caps with red or blue fuzzy tassels set atop
like butter-balls, would come singing up the street and
swing into one or another of the cabarets as though drawn
by some invisible current, the song being continued to
its end.
If the singing were good -- and it usually was -- the
little room would gradually fill, to the joy of the
beaming landlord. The song finished, there would be
refreshments and then one of the audience would get up
and sing some catchy little Parisian tune and if there
were sufficient talent among those present, the
entertainment might last long after the goodwife had
withdrawn with her knitting and her children and until
the landlord himself had closed the shutters outside and
was making furtive attempts to put his place in order.
With the stroke of ten, the guests would pour out and the
door would close behind them to cut off its rectangular
beam of light and leave the street in darkness.
But this life in Fort de France was becoming too
demoralizing and I should soon be too lazy to cook
another meal. The rainy week was over and I bade adieu to
the statue of Josephine, extracted my outfit from the
jealous care of the douanes, and sailed for the ruined
city of St. Pierre.
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