“And then what happened?”
“The film broke.”
It was about the period of hoaxes–April 1 arrived. Bicker appeared at my cabin, where I was reading. “Meacock wants to see you.” I went. Bicker triumphed, and went his way convinced that he could beat the intellectual at his own game, as the Optimist had already shown him he could.
A brighter sky and cooler wind came on. We were soon expected at Saint Vincent. The new moon and calmer waters brought one evening of strange watery beauty. Towards his setting the sun had hidden himself in black clouds, whence he threw a silver light over sea spaces where sea and sky were meeting: he sank, and left the heavens like green havens, with these clouds slowly sailing through their utmost peace. The change soon came; the head wind brought pale grey turbulent days, with the ship playing at rocking-horses; over the head wind and rousing sea, the healthy sun at length dawned on the Sunday of our arrival at Saint Vincent. Sunday, without the voice of church bells or the sight of people going to worship, seemed no Sunday despite its idle hours: at least, the mood sometimes took me so.
The third engineer was acquiring no mean name as a cutter of hair, and I felt the cold after I had been to his open-air chair, near the engine-room staircase. While I sat to him, a characteristic of the mess-room boy was borne on the air from the chief’s room. It was his habit of replying hastily to any observation, “Yes, yes,” and this time the chief’s voice was heard: “Curse you, John, for a blasted nuisance.” “Yes, yes, sir.”
As the sun was stooping under the sea once more, land grew into sight far ahead; mountain or cloud? The mountainous coast was mocked indeed by great continents of cloud above, of its own grey hue. The wind blew hard, but at ten o’clock we were running in under the rocky pinnacles of Saint Vincent, against the blustering wind and the black racing sea. A light or two, chiefly from other steamers, told something of the port. The crescent moon, cloaked in a circling golden mist, was now near setting. We anchored and spent the night in quiet.
A mile or so from our anchorage, in the morning’s clear air, huddled the pink unsightly little town. At distance the heights of rock looked as unsubstantial as Prospero’s magic; the clouds that swam over them and across their steeps might have been solid, so phantasmal were those rocks. Not so with the stony masses overpeering the town; those in their iron-brown nakedness had the aspect of eternal immobility. The air was cold and lucent; the water halcyon blue. Several tramps with rusty black and red, and a sailing ship or two, lay around the Bonadventure; barges of a rough old make clustered closer in to shore.
The invasion by natives began early. A dozen boats were tossing on the waves alongside, with woolly heads and upward eyes seeking what or whom they might devour, and quiet-footed rogues here and there on the decks were trying to sell matches, cigarettes, and red bead handbags. To their attempts, the politest answer was “No good.” “No caree?” Nobody seemed to care. Some of our firemen whose homes were here had gone ashore, with the air of men allowing their old haunts to share their glory.
Two lighters, coppered below, bearded with dark green weed, blundered alongside with bags of coal, and soon the gangs, a grimy and ragged collection, were getting the bags aboard, and the winch grumbling away. Yet it was now made known that we were not to pick up much coal here, but to proceed to Las Palmas for the bulk of our wants. This was unfortunate for the firemen who had gone home. All too soon the blue peter at half-mast and the blowing of the hooter recalled them.
Now, too, it was rumoured that our port of discharge was to be Emden, in Hanover: but of such arrangements it became more difficult to feel assurance.