And winds to beat the frozen sheep:
O fates that did conspire to make a bug
To haunt sad mortals in their sleep!
“NICE gal, that!” mumbled Adams, as he and Clensy hurried away from the crowd that still loitered before the presidential palace. They quickly made their way towards the palm-sheltered portion of the dusty, heat-stricken city.
“Yes, very nice,” responded Clensy, as he gazed vacantly ahead, hurrying Adams along as though he sought to escape from his own embarrassment.
“I’d loike ter marry a bootiful crawture like ’er. Only one fault ter find about ’er—she ain’t fat!” said the sailorman, as he glanced up at Clensy, squinting his solitary eye sideways, like a curious cockatoo.
“Hem!” was Clensy’s rejoinder, as he threw his shoulders back and looked the other way to hide his cynical disgust from Adams’s eye, as that materialistic worthy still expressed several opinions about Sestrina’s face and figure. Anything of a subtle nature in Clensy’s manner or talk was naturally lost to such an intellect as Adams possessed, and so the sailorman at once changed the conversation. “’E’s gone off agin, in one of ’is balmy moods!” the reprobate murmured to himself, then he added aloud, “Hawful ’ot,” and pulled his whiskers.
“Thank God it’s shady here,” said Clensy, as they arrived in the shades of the beautiful mahogany trees. “Let’s see the sights of the town,” said Adams, as they stood under the trees and gazed on the little streets and the long, irregular rows of quaint wooden houses.
“I’m done up, nearly dead for want of sleep,” replied Clensy.
“Why, I feel as fresh as a two-year-old!” growled Adams. The true facts are, that Adams was case-hardened and hadn’t spent a wretched night in attempting to distract the attention of enormous fleas from his person as poor Clensy had done in the low lodging-house bed the night before. The Haytians love company in bed, and, from what Clensy could see, the price of a bed in Hayti was increased if the fleas were lively and plentiful. In fact, the inhabitants were kind-hearted, bohemian folk and believed in the merciful creed of live and let live! A fact that was well illustrated by the state of the streets in Port-au-Prince. Adams said the streets were worse than the streets in Shanghai and Hum-kow, Tokio. The Haytians do their washing in a tub before their front door, and hang their clothes on lines that are spread from one side of the street to the other, tied on to the stems of the palm-trees that usually grow on the pavement side. It was a quaint, semi-poetic sight to Clensy as he gazed at the yellow, crimson and white lingerie and garments of both sexes fluttering to the caresses of the hot winds: wonderful drapery placed side by side without any nice discrimination as to the modest feelings and sensibilities of those who passed by! Adams looked quite jovial as he gazed at the clothes-lines and made critical remarks. The undemocratic Clensy simply looked at the filthy streets and held a large lump of camphor to his nostrils, and often rubbed some on his moustache. Royal Clensy always carried “Keating’s,” a small tooth-comb, and lump of camphor during his travels. He was a wise fellow. Along the kerb-sides were innumerable dustbins, for the Haytians throw all their house refuse into the highway, right opposite their front door. And there it stood, incubating in the hot sunlight, heaving and buzzing, thousands of tiny worlds populated with happy life, green and sapphire-winged insects, worlds upon worlds inhabited by bright-plumaged beings that feed on the offal of their sphere as they sang and danced in their youth and grew old in their universe of inscrutable mystery. Even as Clensy and Adams watched, they saw clouds of bright, gauzy wings arise, millions of God’s humblest beings emigrating as they swarmed away, hissing and singing till they found another constellation of shining hot worlds in front of the stores farther down the great highway of their heavens! As for the black-faced population, they might have been the dead Pharaohs shuffling along in some mysterious holiday, rewakened from the tomb. On they shuffled, apparently oblivious to everything; dusky faces, yellowish faces, greenish faces and copper-coloured faces. A picturesque sight they made. The warm-coloured women and girls were clad in sarongs and scanty semi-European attire as they slouched or shuffled under the palms of the street’s side, laughing and babbling together, girls and youths of all types laughing or yawning as they swallowed the astonished insects as they migrated from one heap of refuse to another, and sometimes fell into the abyss of those open thick-lipped negro and negress mouths!