They finished dinner and strolled down through the palms of the Prado to the Miramar on the Malecon or marine promenade. It was a glorious evening, and the cool sea breeze was coming in from the Gulf of Mexico with the setting of the sun, while a regimental band was playing for the entertainment of the Cubans and Americans who lounged around on the seats, or strolled leisurely along the sea-wall.
“Let’s sit down here and watch the sun set,” suggested Donald, leading the way to a seat. “My artistic eye is taken by the view from here. Isn’t it glorious? I must invest in a pad of paper and a box of water-colors and do some sketching. I’ve got a chance now.”
The sea stretched like a huge mirror of ruddy gold before them, and the sun was going down behind the placid Gulf a huge red ball already eclipsed by the horizon. The windows of the residences on the Malecon gleamed as though a furnace flamed within their walls, and the rocks of old Morro’s headland stood out like rough cast copper in the glow. The light-house tower, the ponderous masonry of Morro Fort and of Cabanas behind, stood placidly reflected in the fading light—calm and hoary as with the dignity of age, and when one gazed upon their rugged walls and heard the rag-time strains of the American band, a strange sense of incongruity took possession of the soul. Here, embodied in those massy bastions, was history—monumental testimony to the glory of old Spain, of the Conquistadores, of buccaneers and sea-rovers, of Columbus, Drake, Morgan and the hosts of reckless seafaring adventurers who had made these waters their cruising ground. From here, De Soto—the Bayard of Spanish chivalry—journeyed to Florida to seek a new El Dorado greater than Mexico or Peru, and left his noble wife, Isabella d’Avila, to hold La Fuerza as Regent of Cuba until his return. For five years she waited for her husband’s coming and kept the prowling sea wolves away from the treasures collected yearly in her stronghold for shipment to Spain. Then came the news of her husband’s death and burial in the turgid waters of the great river which he discovered—the Mississippi—and she surrendered her post to join him three days after the ill news was brought to her.
And in the brave days of old what sights old Morro saw! Slave-ships gliding in from the Guinea Coast, with the sea breeze behind and their ghastly freights below; privateers, adventurers, pirates and simple merchantmen! Plate ships from Panama with the treasures of the Incas in their holds, and galleons and carracks from Vera Cruz, with a lading of the silver of Mexico, slipped in and out of this storied harbor—Llave del Nuevo Mundo—as the Spaniards called it—“The Key to the New World!”
As he mused on these things, McKenzie thought of the prosaic age he lived in and the change wrought by the years. The dark and narrow streets with their grilled windows through which dusky senoritas in days long gone, watched the passers-by or flirted with caballero and hidalgo of Spain, were aglare with electric lights, and the streetcars gonged their noisy way down the stone-paved calles; the avenidas were thronged, not with promenaders in sombreros, black coats, and lace mantillas, but with smartly dressed men and women who spoke Spanish with an American accent, or English with a Spanish accent; with peddlers selling cheap cigars and cigarettes, and newsboys yelling “El Diario!” ... “El Mundo!” ... “Havana Post!” and “New York American!” and soliciting bilingually with easy transition from Spanish to English, and above the hum of conversation and street noises, blared the American band, playing, not the dreamy airs of far-off Castille, which Old Havana knew in thrumming guitars, but the latest Broadway “rag-time” or march of Sousa. And he, McKenzie, how had he come to storied Havana? Not in galleon, carrack, privateersman or slaver brig, but in a little Nova Scotia soft-wood schooner, with a load of dry salted cod-fish!
He sighed and came to a mental conclusion. Romance was in the past. It did not belong to the present; it was always in the past, and memory was like unto a skilful painter who touched up the drab canvases of reality with the colors of glamor long after the picture was made!
The sun had vanished behind the quiet sea and the stars had swarmed into the velvety azure of the firmament upon the heels of the master orb, whose after-glow still flamed above the western horizon. A fishing vessel crept in from the Keys on the breath of the soft north-east trade wind and her crew were chanteying an old Biscayan chorus, while a big steamer ablaze with lights forged out with passengers and cargo on schedule time, to connect with the trains at Key West, ninety miles away. Donald drank in the beauties of the night, and remarked to his companion, “This Cuba is a beautiful country, Jud, and I could sit for hours just dreaming and looking on this sort of thing. Look at those palms with their feathery fronds; that sunset! Oh, to be a master painter or a poet that I might dilate upon the things I see!”
“Yes, it’s very fine,” grudgingly admitted Judson, “but I don’t know as it can beat daown home for scenery. These tropical countries have lots of color in them—the flowers are gaudy and the palms and herbage are very green, but look how coarse they are. Then again, these places are all hell-holes for heat. You sweat all the time, and you’re pestered with flies and bugs of every variety. No, siree, I prefer Nova Scotia. I’ve bin all over th’ world, and I think Eastville has them all skinned for looks an’ climate. When a mosquito bites you Down-east you don’t die of yellow jack like you used to in these ports. This here Havana, until the Yankees cleaned it and drained it, used to be a sailor’s grave-yard.” He paused and lit up a cigar. “Tell me, now that you’re twenty-one an’ skipper of a hooker, tell me, what you think of a seafaring life now? You came aboard that Kelvinhaugh full up to the back teeth with the romance and adventure of it, but have you found it? Do you really like the life?” And he looked quizzically at McKenzie through the cigar smoke.
The other stared for a while at the ruddy glow of the sunset to the westward, and answered slowly, “Have I found romance and adventure in a sea life? I’ll answer that in a peculiar way. On the Kelvinhaugh my ideals were shattered and I hated it all, and I was glad to run away from her in Vancouver. On the voyage to Halifax in the Starbuck I was indifferent. It was intensely monotonous and the adventurous spells were only occasional, like the time we ran the easting down the Horn. But, now, when I look back on these voyages, it gives me a thrill and I see the adventure and romance of them, but it is only by recollection, and not in the actual experience, that I appreciate these things. But in the fisheries, I have found the true and ever-present fascination of seafaring. We’re taking something out of the ocean in that game; we’re dodging the wind and weather with only one objective—that of getting fish. We don’t know what we’re going to get. It’s a gamble, pure and simple, but there is a glamor and hazard in wresting the spoils of the deep from the deep, which does not exist in the other branches of seafaring, where one is paid a wage to sail a vessel from one port to another and keep her in good condition while on the journey. In fishing, we are in closer intimacy with the ocean and all its moods. We brave it in small, but able vessels with men whom we work with as partners, and we work in it, rather than on it. We know it as the merchant seaman cannot know it, for we know the floor of the ocean, while the other seamen only see the surface. To them, the sea is a waste of salt water. To us it is an element which we regard as an opaque mass which hides that which we seek and we are forever penetrating its secrets. We know the currents below; we know the depth of water on our Banks; we know what the bottom is like—rocks, gravel, mud or sand, and we try to figure out the migrations of the fish which travel over these bottoms in the gloom of the light-defying fathoms. We lay our lines over the sea floor always hopefully and we’re always looking forward to a catch. When the fish are striking it is dollars in our pockets and we’re robbing old ocean’s horde; when they’re not striking, we look forward optimistically to another day’s looting. Monotony, the drawback in seafaring, has thus no place in fishing. We are keener observers of the weather and thus become closer students of natural phenomena; we work hard, but we live well and sleep in comfortable quarters; we sail in craft of yacht-like build, and we enjoy the sport of sailing as no yachtsman can; and best of all, we are free and independent men banded together for a common purpose and obeying our leader without force or coercion. Seafaring under those conditions appeals to me. I am content. I desire no other vocation for gaining a livelihood, for it gives me money for my material needs, and enough of adventure, romance and the element of chance to satisfy my mind and soul. So there you have it.”
Nickerson smiled. “You’ve expressed it pretty well,” he remarked, “and I cal’late you’ve recorded my ideas on the subject also. We fishermen are the true Sea Kings. Your merchantman is only a ship laborer—nothing more and nothing less. I learnt that, and I went back to the fishing. The merchant seaman looks upon us with contempt; the landsman, with pity for our hard lot, and we laugh at the both of them. They are fools! They don’t know—they can’t know, for we are a fraternity—a lodge intricate and hard for the stranger to enter, for our initiation is difficult and not easily acquired. We are the finest sailors afloat, and we harvest Neptune’s pastures when his watch-dog, Boreas, sleeps. When we want a change, we come droghing fish and deals to the Indies or the Brazils and live in perpetual summer.”