Capt. McKenzie came up to say he was glad I was going to be on his ship a little longer, which was agreeable, to say the least. I had noticed the Captain before, though I did not get well acquainted with him. He was the sort of man one likes to meet, straightforward, intelligent, understanding his business thoroughly. He knows how to treat the ladies among his passengers equally well, too, instead of devoting all his time to a favored group, like so many sea captains. This in itself is enough to make him a marked man in my memory.
The only place we had to call before reaching the island of Barbados was at St. Lucia, where there was little to interest us on shore, but where I was glad to see a troop-ship just arrived from Africa, with a cargo of wives (more or less) of black troops that were serving near Sierra Leone, each one accompanied by a parrot and monkey, beside several small children. The British government had taken them from the West Indies to Africa with their lords (I mean the women) and was now returning them a little in advance of their dusky partners. I asked half a dozen at random if they had ever been legally married and the reply in every case was "No, suh," delivered with a certain pride. The West Indian negro has not yet added matrimony to his list of virtues.
Early on the morning of the day our vessel anchored off Greytown, which is the capital of Barbados, I found on deck Mr. "Eddie" Armstrong, manager of the Marine Hotel, ready to answer questions in relation to that hostelry. "Eddie" told me that he had just the sort of rooms I required for myself and "Miss Carney," and put me under obligations by refraining from cheap insinuations, which nine men out of ten in his position would have made. Later he saw us through the custom-house with expedition and sent us in a carriage to the Marine, which is two miles from the centre, in a breezy and roomy location, just enough removed from the noise of the sea waves.
Miss Byno, at the hotel counter, greeted me with a precise copy of the smile she had worn three years before, while Mr. Pomeroy, the proprietor, said he was glad to see me, exactly as if he meant it. Our apartment consisted of a sitting room and two connecting chambers on the second floor, which were clean, airy and cosy. It was the nearest to "house-keeping," as I remarked to Miss May, of any place we had found.
"We must resume our genealogy to-morrow," she said, as she opened the table and set up the typewriting machine. "We have neglected it dreadfully."
"No," I answered, for I had been developing a new plan. "I am going to lay that ponderous history on the shelf for the present and ask you to aid me in another and more interesting task. The family tree is in such shape that it can afford to rest awhile and I am sick to death of it."
Then, as the anxious look came into her face—the look that came so easily when I said anything that lacked explicitness—I continued:
"Don't laugh at me, but I am going to begin, to-morrow, a—novel!"
"A—novel!" she repeated, wonderingly. "Do you write novels?"
"I am going to write one, with your help," I said, decidedly. "It won't be exactly a novel, either, because it will be based on fact, pretty nearly all fact—in fact. What would you say to a novel based on the very trip we are making?"