But ere the cruise was over he and Sam and one other were the only remaining members of my original crew. Never did the Vigilant’s mud-hook seek bottom in the limpid waters of some lovely isle that one or more of my sailors did not desert. Not that they had aught of which to complain, or found their duties on the ship irksome, but good American dollars in their pockets, a rich green shore, and chocolate-colored sirens were temptations beyond the black man’s power to resist. Yet never were we short-handed. For every man who left, a score clamored to be taken on, and had the Vigilant been on a pirating adventure I could have filled her to the hatches with as varicolored and vari-charactered a crew as ever swarmed over the bulwarks of a stricken prize.
To the West Indians, every American is a millionaire and a philanthropist, and in their eyes, apparently, he is morally bound to carry each, all, and sundry to that dreamed-of-land the States, the Mecca of every inhabitant of the islands. Wherever the Vigilant folded her white wings and came to rest, we were besieged by a small army of black, brown, yellow, and every intermediate shade, all begging to be allowed to accompany us. For the West Indian is a restless soul, never content unless on the move and caring not a jot where day or [[14]]night may find him, albeit he is intensely patriotic, and thinks his island preferable to all others and his people the salt of the earth.
Thus it came about that, what with deserters and new-comers, the crew was a sort of kaleidoscopic aggregation, shifting from yellow to brown, from black to tan, from soft-voiced, slurring-tongued “patois men” to h-dropping ’Badians and brogue-speaking Montserratans. And a happy family they were at that—good-naturedly chaffing one another, having long-winded arguments over the respective merits of their various island homes, using preposterous, meaningless words of their own invention. And all and each making life miserable for the hapless natives of that “right little, tight little island” designated on the maps as Barbados, affectionately dubbed “Little England” by its sons and daughters, and also known as “Bimshire Land,”[2] whose natives seem for some strange reason ever to be the butt and the jest of the other [[15]]islanders, and who are the pariahs of their race, if we are to believe their fellow negroes of the Caribbees.
Never did my men tire of taunting some poor ’Badian with the doggerel verse
A ha’penny loaf an’ a bit o’ salt fish,
Da’ ’s wha’ de ’Badian call’ a dish.
A bottle o’ soda divided ’twix’ t’ree,
Da’ ’s wha’ de ’Badian call’ a spree.
If the ’Badians happened to be in the minority, they bore it as best they might or retorted that “You men awnt civ’lized. You don’ know better’n to wear alpargats to a charch of a Sunday,” a response which usually brought on a loud cracking of tough skulls, as, like enraged goats, the men butted one another’s wool-covered craniums—a contest in which the ’Badian always emerged victorious. For to accuse an islander of wearing alpargatas (the sandal-like footgear brought from Venezuela) to church, is an insult not lightly to be suffered. Indeed, if ever there was a being who outshone Solomon in all his glory, it is the West Indian negro on the Sabbath; and his highest ambition is, in order to draw greater attention to his gorgeous raiment, to possess a pair of brilliant, pumpkin-colored shoes which, to quote his own [[16]]words, “goes queek, queek when Ah walks in de charch.”
As might be expected, in the constant change and interchange of multicolored flotsam and jetsam, we picked up many a strange and interesting, not to say downright weird, character.