The mate spat freely over the side, while he gathered his powers for a description.
"If ye can think of a fish that's been a long time dead," he suggested, "an' has turned a sort of phosphorescent brown-yellow in decayin', ye'll have a general idea of the color. The head, like all the vipers, is low, flat an' triangle-shaped. The eye is a bright orange color, an' so shinin' that flashes from it look like sparks of red-yellow fire. I've never seen them at night, but folks who have, say that in the dark the eyes look like glowin' charcoal.
"If I had to take a walk through the St. Lucia woods, I'd put on armor, I would! Why, any minute, something you take for a branch, a knot of liana, a clump of fruit, a hangin' air-plant, may take life an' strike. An' that's all ye'll ever know in this world."
"There's no cure for it?"
"None. A little while after a fer-de-lance strikes, ye're as dead as if you'd been dropped in mid-Atlantic, with a shot tied to your feet."
"Maybe I'm just as glad I'm not going to land there," said Stuart, "though I guess it's one of the most famous fighting spots of the world. I read once that for a hundred and fifty years there was never a year without a battle on that island. Seven times it was held by the English and seven times by the French."
"Like enough," replied the mate. "It's owned by the English now, but Castries is a French town, through and through. But Castries sticks in my memory for a reason which means more to a deep-water sailor than any land fightin'. We were lyin' in the harbor at Castries when the Roddam came in, ay, more'n twenty years ago."
"What was the Roddam?" queried Stuart, scenting a story.
"Have ye forgotten," answered the mate in a return query, "or didn't ye ever know? Let me tell ye what the Roddam was!"
"We were lyin' right over there, in Castries Harbor, dischargin' coal—which was carried down by negro women in baskets on their heads—when we saw creep round the headland of Vigie, where you can see the old barracks from here, the shape of a steamer. She came slowly, like some wounded an' crippled critter. Clear across the bay we could hear her screw creakin,' an' her engines clankin' like they were all poundin' to pieces. What a sight she was! We looked at her, struck still ourselves an' unable to speak. They talk of a Phantom Ship, but if ever anything looked like a Phantom Steamer, the Roddam was that one.