This response seemed to be entirely satisfactory.
By contrast with our first week on Rodrigues, which was peaceful and relaxed, the last three days gave us a taste of the furor that surrounds the rare visits of M.V. Mauritius. The sleepy town of Port Mathurin woke up. From all over the island, people converged on the town. Boats from villages along the shore began to arrive, piled high with produce and livestock. Impromptu pens were knocked together and the waterfront was transformed into a squealing, bleating, and cackling open-air market where traders, who came over from Mauritius on the boat, could wander up and down to inspect and bid on the available stock.
The day the boat arrived was given over to landing the cargo, including two mares to swell the equine population. Letters and packages were distributed in a daylong ceremony of mail call from the porch of the administration building.
The second day saw hundreds of empty oil drums ferried out, to be refilled and brought back on the next trip. The produce of the island, principally garlic and dried octopus, was sent aboard in a never-ending procession of lighters that were towed out through the channel in strings of three or four to deliver their cargo and then return, under sail, at their own convenience.
On the final day, with a proficiency obviously developed from much practice, the animals were loaded. The cows, lassoed expertly and forced onto their sides by the seemingly painful expedient of twisting their tails up between their legs, were trussed up by their four feet and loaded upside down into the open boats. Eight or ten were carried at a time, rolling their eyes in patient misery until they had been hoisted aboard the Mauritius by crane and released into the hold.
The goats were all driven out to the end of the dock, their retreat was blocked off with movable barricades, and then they were relentlessly herded off the edge into the waiting lighters, some of the recalcitrant ones being tossed in by a couple of legs. Arrived at the ship, a huge wicker basket was lowered by crane, ten to twenty goats at a time were tumbled in and lifted aboard to be dumped into deck pens.
Last of all went the pigs—and the passengers. The pigs, “who always get seasick,” according to the captain, were stacked on deck in the same kind of tubular wicker container we had seen in Bali—with a snout protruding from one end and a tail from the other. For the sake of the passengers, we hoped their bloodcurdling shrieks and squeals as they were rolled down to the boats would eventually diminish.
We sailed a few hours before the Mauritius, knowing she would pass us, probably during the first night, and would be waiting when we reached Port Louis. The only unusual circumstance of our departure was our decision, on the advice of the pilot, to slip our hawser rather than risk maneuvering among the reefs while attempting to get it aboard.
“We’ll take it out to the supply ship,” he assured us, “and you can get it from them in Mauritius.”
The trip to Mauritius, 400 miles to the west, was routine and we made an easy entrance into the inner harbor of Port Louis at 1000 on October 5. By 1130 we had been cleared by the harbor office, doctor, and immigration officer and were free to explore the homeland of the now extinct dodo.