“’Twas the money done it!
“‘A bob—a bob, massa!’ he says. ‘Dat’s diff’rent, sar! I’se too sorry I spoke so rude to massa. A bob! Go home, you damn dog!’
“So the dog cleared out and I comed down and gived the heathen his shilling, and took the mangoes and marched off to the Careenage and joined my ship. But I’d paid a lot too much money, of course.
“Next morn us got to St Vincent—an island that runs up into the sky, like a Dartmoor tor, only ’tis a lot larger and the sides of un be all covered with palms and savage trees. The town lies spread at sea level—all white and red—and the forest slopes behind with fine trees. Some of them was blazing with red flowers. A pride of the morning shower falled just as we got here, and the rain flashed like fire. There was a rainbow in it, and I never seed such a bright one afore. The caps of the mountains was hidden in clouds, but the sun touched ’em and made ’em all rosy; then it swallowed ’em up and drawed ’em into the blazing blue. There’s Carib Indians to St Vincent, and one Carib be worth five niggers when it comes to a bit of work. They’ve got a queer sort of religion, I’m told, though not so queer as the negroes. The niggers’ religion be called Obeah, and the Obi Men be awful rum customers. Missionaries try to stop ’em and their goings-on, but Obi mysteries still happen and all sorts of devilish deeds are done in secret.
“I never knowed a place what smelled worse than Kingstown, St Vincent. Farmer Chown’s muck-heap’s a fool to it. Niggers be the same here as everywhere—a poor, slack-witted lot. If you want to see work, you’ve got to go and look at the coolies in the sugar factories, or the Caribs. Among niggers only one in a hundred works. T’other ninety-nine look on and talk and give advice. But they be men and women all right, though our bosun, Jim Bradley, says ’tis generally thought they haven’t got no souls. St Vincent be the place where arrowroot comes from. After that we went down to next island, by name of Grenada, and seed a long row of rocks sticking out of the sea, which be called the Grenadines. They are scorched up places—just splashes of yellow rock against the blue sea; but folks dwell in some of ’em and on some live nought but the wild goats and pelicans. The fishes in these seas fight like hell, and be always a-lashing the surface with their fins and tails, seemingly. Can’t live and let live by the looks of it. A flying-fish do put me in mind of myself, for he’s always moving on. If he bides in the sea, barracudas and other chaps go for him, and when he comes out for a sail in the air, the birds are after him. Then the swordfish go for the porpoises, and the sharks go for everything.
“Grenada be a bigger place than St Vincent, and very wild up on the mountains by the look of it. All along the sea runs a strip of silvery sand, and cocoanut palms almost dip in the water. Our tub called here and there, and I seed wonderful fine goyles and coombs running inland, all full of blue air and forests and waterfalls a-tumbling down off great crags in the mountains. ’Tis an awful savage island as was throwed up by volcanoes out of the sea once ’pon a time, and will be throwed down again in like manner sooner or late—so Jim Bradley says.
“Grenada be a wonnerful brave place for nutmegs, which you might not know grow ’pon trees like almond trees. There be male and female trees, and one male goes to every ten females. A fine thing, even if you was a tree, to have ten wives—so Bradley says! But I only want one, and that’s my dinky Minnie, so brave and so lovely.
“St George, Grenada, we stopped at for a week, and I seed a great deal of the place. They’ve got a lunatic asylum and a klink there; and they want ’em both. Niggers often go mad, but it ban’t from over-work, that I will swear.
“The King of the Caribs lived here, but he was a poor fool and believed the French. They gived him a few bottles of brandy and he gived them his island on conditions. But of course they broke the conditions. And pretty well all the Caribs died fighting. The last of the King’s men jumped into the sea and was drowned rather than give in.
“The market would make you die of laughing, I’m sure. Never seed such a chatter of business even to Moreton on a Saturday. Such a row! You’d think the wealth of the nation was changing hands, but you could buy up the whole lot pretty near for thirty shilling. But a gay bit of coloured scenery, I promise you, with the women’s turbans all a-bobbing, like a million coloured parrots. ’Tis a very fine place for cocoanut palms also. The little young nuts look like giant acorns in long sprigs. I went to a nigger man on business and met with some mighty strange sights in his garden. There was land-crabs lived there and a tame tortoise, and a nursery of young cocoanut trees and a nursery of young niggers also, for the man was a family man and had a lot of little people.