I.
AFTER the long stretches of ocean, you from the North will find that there is something positively cosy about these dear islands. You tuck your head under your wing with the parrots at night, off one island, and, the next thing you know, it’s morning, the sweet land-breeze steals in through the port-hole, and you’re up with the monkeys off another island—perhaps more enchanting than the last. Why, it seems not half the trouble going from port to port that it is to make fashionable calls in the great city, and such a lot more fun.
But speaking of parrots and monkeys: the only ones we have seen thus far were some very solemn little creatures which have been brought to the ship for sale,—poor captives, chained and unnaturally pious, sitting alongside their black captors.
We have not heard a single bird-note since leaving the North. Is it possible that there are no song-birds here, and in fact no birds of plumage left about the settlements? We fully expected the latter, but not a glimpse have we had of them,—no, not even in the forest along the Ozama, did we distinguish a single bird-note. Can it be that the plume-hunters for our Northern milliners have ranged through all these sunny islands? Ah, my friends of the feather toques and the winged head-gear, what have we to answer for? It all seems so empty without the birds where trees and flowers grow so gladly; just as if Nature’s feast were spread to empty chairs. After all, how fondly we do love that particular expression of creation with which we are long familiar! My heart reaches out in homesick yearning for the notes of our dear Northern songsters. How brutal are the details of the “march of civilisation!”
From San Juan, Puerto Rico, to St. Thomas it was only a night’s journey, and I am sure, had we been so disposed, we might have touched some other islands equally lovely on the way. But there must be some time for rest,—even though Little Blue Ribbons said she did not want to sleep (she knew she couldn’t), and Sister thought it a great waste of valuable experience not to make all the ports there were. Nevertheless, when morning came and the sun was wide awake, I had no little trouble in arousing the children.
And now it came to pass that all those threatenings and fitful tears and dire forebodings of the day before were simply whims and weather jokes. The sea fell into a gentle calm, and on St. Thomas there never shone a brighter sun or blew a sweeter breeze; and we realised that at last we were under the lee of that smiling windbreak of the Caribbean—“The Windward Islands.” Getting our anchor early, we moved from our first stopping-place, well out in the harbour, over to the wharves; where the huge piles of coal rose up before the port-hole, with other ranges of piles, like mimic mountains, farther on, while we were so close to the dock that I could see the gangway being lowered, as I bent over the sleepy little girls.
“Look, children!” I said,—“look, wake up, you’re losing so much!” And they rub their pretty eyes and want to know what’s the matter.
“Here we are, dears, at St. Thomas, the coaling-station. Daddy is waiting for us. I’ll go up on deck. Send word by Rudolph if you want me to help with the ribbons.”
So I hurried up the after companion stairs. Close to our side were the mammoth piles of coal, from which we were to make requisition; off about a mile to the other side of the great amphitheatre lay Charlotte Amalie (the chief city of the Danish Islands), making for herself as beautiful a picture as one could wish. We were in a superb harbour, with high, dome-shaped hills embracing us on either side, and the little city of Charlotte Amalie to the right of us on the beautiful slopes above, like a white lady reaching out her jewelled hands in gracious welcome. Whatever tales of buccaneer and pirate, of scuttled galleons, of buried treasure, of maidens fair, of romance, I had ever heard, came hurrying back to me in that delicious spot; and when the Castles of Bluebeard, and that erstwhile king of pirates, Blackboard, came into view, it seemed truly as if we ought to fly at our main-truck the black flag with the skull and cross-bones, and run out the cold bronze nose of a “long-tom” over our bulwarks, just to add the finishing touch.
The little girls and I were simply determined to let romance run riot in Charlotte Amalie. We would eat pomegranates and wear flowers in our hair; we would dream dreams on Bluebeard’s turret, and win into smiles his villainous, wrinkled, old ghostship. But, firm as was our purpose, it required no small effort to keep it uppermost in our minds. We thought Daddy would certainly be dragged into the water before he had engaged his shore boat. He was howled at, pulled at by the sleeves, jerked at by the coat, by great roaring blacks, fairly gnashing their teeth in impotent rage at Daddy’s indecision. But who could decide in such a mob? We were beckoned, at last, to come along, and picking our way down the ladder, plumped ourselves into “Champagne Charlie’s” boat, leaving “Uncle Sam,” “Honest William,” “Captain Jinks,” and a score of others screaming a medley of imprecations and their own praises in a mad scramble for the next victim.
We were not only beset by those in the boats, but also by a swarm of semi-amphibious imps,—not little imps by any means, but huge, muscular, bronze Tritons, who pursued, with wonderful rapidity, “Champagne Charlie’s” catch, and clung to the gunwale of our boat, and dove underneath and about us, wholly indifferent to our terror at the thought of being capsized. They howled, they swore with Southern abandon because we would not throw them pennies to dive for; and away off lay the little White Lady—the beautiful Charlotte Amalie. What a naughty lot of children she had! Daddy told “Charlie” that if he would not hurry us out of that mob, he’d not get a penny for his trouble, and Daddy used forcible English, too; for, strange to say, English is the common as well as the official language of the Danish West Indies. But I must not mislead you. It’s not your English or my English they use; it’s a funny kind of jargon; a baby talk disguised by Scandinavian intonations and besmirched by generations of African savagery. Sometimes you think you understand it, and then you think you don’t, and again you wish you hadn’t—so there you are.
Well, “Charlie” is at last aroused and a few good strokes of his oars free us from the vermin and bring us into less troubled waters. On the way across the land-locked harbour we passed a Danish man-of-war, a Russian frigate, a Venezuelan cruiser, a little schooner-rigged sailing “packet,” which carries the mail to other islands, and a number of powerfully built trading schooners; still nearer shore, there was a fine floating dry dock, where a very shapely little schooner—evidently once a yacht—was out of water being repaired.