Disappearance of ladies and retirement of the men to the smoking-room or porches for a congenial exchange of confidences and a forgetfulness of cares and responsibilities. Social mellowness slowly hardening back into desiccated conversation.
The elders have had their daily round of recreation, the only kind they still excel at, and are again models of dignity and decorum for the younger generation to respect, but not to emulate.
Such an insular touch of nature I have not, of course, observed on our boat. The above was merely one of those observations of former times that come to my mind during the long hours of sitting and gazing at the tireless sea. Continental table-d’hoters become demonstrative over their wine, but do not taper on and taper off like the English. One expects foreigners to gesticulate and be undignified from first to last.
We are in the Caribbean Sea “alright,” with trade winds to tame us, choppy seas to chafe us, and sudden showers to shift us. The officers and the militia captain are parading in dazzling white duck suits, in which they are obliged to run under cover every little while from the rain. A mist appears over the horizon and in a few minutes overtakes us in the form of a drenching rain, causing the officers on duty to put on their raincoats, and those off duty to come in and be treated to highballs. This is their high life, and makes them accept with thankfulness and thanks whatever and whichever comes. Water is man’s greatest enemy as well as friend in the Caribbean. It drives through the canvas awnings, steals into the staterooms, rusts steel buttons and umbrella frames, ruins clothing, spoils cigars and gives men a taste for liquor.
The captain, however, is temperate and has none of the sailors’ vices, as no man who lives with the bottom of the sea constantly under his feet should have. This nautical peculiarity of the captain has a good effect upon the crew, and is a recommendation to the United Fruit Company. It enables him to drink with impunity when alone with the passengers. He believes that only temperance men should be allowed to drink. He believes that, being temperate, drink does him no harm, and that he who thinks like a gentleman will drink like a gentleman. The “besht” engineer is also temperate, for the captain sees to it that drink does not harm him either. The poor fellow has had nothing alcoholic since we left New Orleans. But he will get his bottle of beer with his Christmas dinner to remind him of the cause of all the happiness he has ever had. Our captain is so opposed to intemperance that he will not keep a man in the crew who is addicted to drink. The fate of the best engineer is therefore settled, and he is taking his last voyage on the S. S. Limón. But he has not had his last good time off the S. S. Limón by any means.
We have beautiful sunsets and sunrises, although they are not very different from those in Illinois except that the colors are more crude and garish. The softened, hazy, fumigated, terra cotta hues of the Chicago sunsets are unknown here. It is necessary to go to Chicago to see them. On bright and clear days the Caribbean sky and water have an intense blue color that we seldom see in Northern latitudes, but when the wind blows and the sky is overcast, the water is of a bright, seasick green color, known to poets although not to poetry.
We have moonlight nights that are worth taking a five-day boat ride to see. At times the sky and sea are bathed in silver sheens and shimmers that equal those in some of the paintings and poems, and which are worthy the pen of a Scott or Shelley. At other times the firmament is caverned with jasper clouds, and the water mottled with mysterious isles of shadow. As Shelley says:
The chasm in which the sun has sunk is shut
By darkest barriers of enormous cloud,
Like mountain over mountain huddled—but