“‘Dat my youngest darter,’ he said to me, and pointed to a little maid playing along with the lizards and things and dressed the same as them.
“‘A very nice darter, too,’ I said to him.
“‘Dat my son ober dar,’ he said, ‘and dat my next youngest son, and dem gals eating dat shaddock—dey twins.’
“I told him I never seed a braver lot o’ childer, and then he went in his house and fetched out his wife and his old father and his aunt. And I praised the lot and told him what a terrible lucky chap he was; and he got so pleased that he gived me half a barrow-load of fruit.
“There’s a lake inland by the name of Etang, and the niggers say how the Mother of the Rain lives in. But I told ’em that the Mother o’ Rain lives homealong with us in Cranmere Pool ’pon Dartymoor. But they wouldn’t believe that. Anyway, their Mother of Rain belongs to Obeah, and she’m an awful strong party. ’Tis a wisht, silent place she do live in, all hid in palms and ferns and wonderful trees blazing with flowers. They do say the witch comes out of the water of a moony night to sing; but I don’t know nought about that. I’d go and have a look and see if I could teel a trap here and there; but there ban’t no game worth naming in these parts, though Bradley tells me they’ve got deer in Tobago. If there be, I’ll bring some pairs of their horns home to ’e to stick over the doors to Hangman’s Hut. How I do wish I was there; but ban’t no good coming back yet awhile, and when I do, us will have to be awful spry. I wonder if you’ve found out aught—you or Titus? I daresay such a clever man as him have got wind of the truth afore now. I be bringing home some pink coral studs for him. You might let him know it, if you please. I suppose they’ve gived back my gun to you? They did ought to, since no doubt everybody thinks I be dead. If you be very pressed for money, sell the gun to Sim; but not if you can help it.
“Mister Henry Vivian be in Tobago, and I hope as he’ll suffer me to have speech with him some day soon. ’Twould be a tower of strength to get him ’pon our side. But such a stickler as him and so quick to take a side and hold to it—he may be against me, and, if so, the less I see of him the better.
“But I must tell about Trinidad while my paper holds out. We comed to it after Grenada, and a very fine place it is. And a very terrible sight I seed in the Court House there, namely, no less than a nigger tried for murder. The coolies be short-tempered people and often kill their wives. Then the vultures find ’em in the sugar-canes. But niggers, though they talk a lot, never kill one another as a rule. This chap had shot a tax-collector, and the black people in the court didn’t seem to take it very serious; but the jury fetched it in murder, and he was sentenced to be hanged, I’m sorry to say. My flesh did cream upon my bones to hear it, for it might have been me; and them words I should certainly have heard but for my own way of doing things after they took me. The nigger stood so steady as if he was cut out of coal. A good plucked man, and went to his doom like a hero. It took three judges to hang him. They sat under a great fan in court to keep ’em cool. But all three growed awful hot over the job. The people thought ’twas very hard on the man, and so did I.
“They’ve got a pitch lake here, and there’s a lot of business doing, and a racecourse and a railway.
“At Port o’ Spain I met the rummest human that ever I did meet. ’Twas in a drinking-place what me and Bradley went to one evening. This here chap was bar-keeper, and his father had been a Norwegian, and his mother had been a Spaniard from Hayti, and he was born in the Argentine Republic, and he said he was an Englishman! Swore it afore all-comers! Us told the man it couldn’t be so—according to the laws of nature; and he got his wool off something cruel, and cussed in five languages, and axed us who the blue, blazing hell we thought we were, to come teaching him. He said he was English to the marrow in his bones; and we proved he couldn’t be, in good sailor language. Then he said that such trash as us wasn’t going to be heard afore him; and then we got a bit short like (though not in liquor, that I promise you) and told the man he was no better than a something or other mongrel—like everybody else in foreign parts. After that glasses got flying about, and we slung our hook back to the ship. But it shows what fools men are, I reckon.
“The coolies put all their money on their wives. And I’d do the same, as well you know. But they don’t do it in a manner of speaking, but really and truly, for they hammer all their silver money into nose-rings, and bracelets, and armlets, and leglets, and their females go chinking about with the family fortune hanging to ’em, like fruit to a tree. I seed a lot at a sugar factory nigh Saint Joseph—a little place out over from Port o’ Spain. One estate there done very well, but others was all falling to pieces, and the machinery all rusting, and no business doing at all. The air in a busy factory smells of sugar, and the canes be smashed between steel rollers, and the juice comes out in a stream, like a moor brook. Then they set to work and, after a lot of things have been done to this here juice, including boiling, it turns into brown sugar. And the remains be treacle, and the crushed cane is used for firing. They also make rum out of sugar-cane, and very cheerful drinking ’tis. The coolie girls be awful purty—so brown as my Minnie, with dark eyes that flash. But they keep themselves to themselves. They wouldn’t keep company or go out walking with a sailor man for the world. And their men folks be very short and sharp with them. One gal was singing and scrubbing a floor when I catched sight of her. All in red she was, with silver bangles on her arms, and wonnerful glimmering eyes, and not a day more than thirteen years old. ‘That’s a purty child,’ I said to Jim Bradley. ‘Child be damned,’ he said in his short way. ‘She’s a growed woman and very like got a family.’ The truth is that they be grandmothers at thirty. But I’ve only seen one purtier girl in all my born days, and that’s my gal.