“Well, if you asks me,” he said, “I should say we are bound for the West Indies.”
“The West Indies, Bill! What makes you think that?”
“Well, I thinks that, because it seems to me as that is where we are most wanted. The French have got a stronger fleet than we have out there.”
“Well, they have got as strong a fleet at Toulon, and quite as strong a one at Brest.”
“Yes, that may be so, but I think we are pretty safe to lick them at either of these places if they will come out and fight us fair, whereas in the West Indies they are a good bit stronger. There are so many ports and islands that, as we are, so to speak, a good deal scattered, they might at any moment come upon us in double our strength.”
“Have you ever been there before, Bill?”
“Ay, two or three times. In some respects it could not be better; you can buy fruit, and ’bacca and rum for next to nothing, when your officers give you a chance. Lor’, the games them niggers are up to to circumvent them would make you laugh! When you land, an old black woman will come up with a basket full of cocoa-nuts. Your officer steps up to her and examines them, and they look as right as can be. Perhaps he breaks one and it is full of milk; very good. So you go up to buy, and the officer looks on. The woman hands you two or three, and when she gives you the last one she winks her eye. She don’t say anything, but you drop a sixpence into her hand among the coppers you have to pay for the others, and when she has quite sold out the officer orders you into the boat to lie off till he comes back. And when he returns he is quite astonished to find that most of the crew are three sheets in the wind.
“Then they will bring you sugar-canes half as thick as your wrist, looking as innocent as may be; both ends are sealed [pg 98]up with bits of the pith, and when you open one end you find that all the joints have been bored through, and the cane is full of rum. But mind, lads, you are fools if you touch it; it is new and strong and rank, and a bottle of it would knock you silly. And that is not the worst of it, for fever catches hold of you, and fever out there ain’t no joke. You eats a good dinner at twelve o’clock, and you are buried in the palisades at six; that’s called yellow jack. It is a country where you can enjoy yourselves reasonable with fruit, and perhaps a small sup of rum, but where you must beware of drinking; if you do that you are all right. The islands are beautiful, downright beautiful; there ain’t many places which I troubles myself to look at, but the West Indies are like gardens with feathery sorts of trees, and mountains, and everything that you can want in nature.”
“It is very hot, isn’t it, Bill?”
“It ain’t, so to speak, cool in summer-time. In winter it is just right, but in summer you would like to lie naked all day and have cold water poured over you. Still, one gets accustomed to it in time. Then, you see, there is always excitement of some kind. There are pirates and Frenchmen, and there are Spaniards, whom I regard as a cross between the other two. They hide about among the islands and pop out when you least expect them. You always have to keep your eyes in your head and your cutlass handy when you go ashore. The worst of them are what they call mulattoes; they are a whity-brown sort of chaps, neither one thing nor the other, and a nice cut-throat lot they are. A sailor who drinks too much and loses his boat is as like as not to be murdered by some of them before morning. I hate them chaps like poison. [pg 99]There are scores of small craft manned by them which prey upon the negroes, who are an honest, merry lot, and not bad sailors either in their way. Sometimes four or five of these pirate craft will go together, and many of them are a good size and carry a lot of guns. They make some island their head-quarters. Any niggers there may be on it they turn into slaves. There are thousands of these islands, so at least I should say, scattered about, some of them mere sand-spots, others a goodish size.