“Throw her in and I’ll give you a quarter!” Mary was a young girl, black as night, with a hard, cruel, unsmiling face, and the restless watching eyes of a wild animal. She, too, had been carrying coal all day, and when her work was done, she, with some fifteen or twenty others, had followed along the dock to the ship’s bow, where pennies were being tossed to the pier by some of our plethoric passengers. A coin would fly through the air, drop on the pier amidst a scrambling, wriggling pile of howling negroes, with legs and arms and heads in a hopeless heap. Mary fought well; she already had a mouthful of pennies; she was as swift as thought, and as merciless of the others as the unfeeling elements. It was easy to see that she was a match for any man in the crowd, and it was easy, too, to see that, when the promise of “a quarter”—a mighty pile of money to those poor children—was held out to the one who should throw her into the water, there was more willingness to get the money than to approach Mary. She knew enough English to take in the situation, and stood there on the pier, not ten inches from the edge, with her bare arms folded, her thin, powerful legs tense, her head thrown back with defiance in its motionless poise, her fierce eyes rolling from side to side, watching for the first who would dare approach her.
One more word from the ship, and Mary was caught around the waist by a black giant who had been waiting his chance. In an instant, she seemed to grow a foot taller. She made a plunge for the man’s throat,—bent him down, down, down, with her eyes fiercely terrible; and there she held the unhappy creature until he begged for mercy, and amidst cheers from Mary’s admirers, slank away out of sight. Her spring was so sudden, so silent, so fierce, that I could not think of her as being human; she was more of the wild beast than one of her Ladyship’s children. And yet we cheered for Mary, too, and she it was who won the quarter.
I wish the Lady Charlotte would look after her children better.
CHAPTER VI.
MARTINIQUE
I.
THERE are so many different ways of seeing things—I suppose as many ways as there are souls to see; and yet, in a measure, one can generalise these many ways under two great heads. Just as we call the infinite variations of light, from the first bird-note of breaking day, through all the changing fancies of brilliant sun and wandering clouds—as we call it all day; and the wonders of darkness, night; so can our ways of seeing things be generalised under two great heads. There is the orthodox, scholarly, scientific way, and there is the heterodox, unscholarly, and unscientific way. Following the law of compensation, there is much to be said on both sides. If the mind is fully prepared, through study and research into the nature of the object to be seen, one has the satisfaction of viewing it as one would the face of an old and familiar friend. On the other hand, when the mind greets the object to be seen, unprepared, in an absolutely unprejudiced, plastic state, it has all the delight of surprise, enthusiasm, and novelty, over a newly acquired possession. And none will deny that this unscholarly, unprepared way of seeing things has its merits. In travelling where the countries visited are interesting mainly from an historical standpoint, no doubt much would be lost to the traveller whose knowledge of the background for his picture is indistinct; in that case, truly, the scholar is the one whose enjoyment should be keenest. On the other hand, where the charm of a place lies largely in its picturesque beauty, in its possibilities of surprise, through novel and curious phases of life, I believe that the traveller who is wholly unprepared has pleasures in store for him equalled only by the exquisite and spontaneous enthusiasms of childhood.
This long preamble is not so much to explain the two ways of seeing things, as it is to console myself for having known so little of the West Indies before starting on this cruise. There is no use in trying to appear wiser than one is, because, before one knows it, along comes some one who does really know; out flashes the critical knife, and off vanishes that beautifully flimsy wind-bag into thin air. For instance, I might have stood complacently unmoved when the great mountain peaks and the sleeping volcanic craters of Martinique rose in green majesty from the Caribbean Sea, and I might have said: “Why, certainly, that is just as I expected!” But I did not say so, because I had not expected such mountain peaks in the West Indies, though somewhat prepared by the islands we had thus far seen.
Once on a time I had a very charming picture in my mind of the West Indies, but, charming as it was, it was not the real islands as I have found them; and ever since having known the reality I have been trying to revitalise that former picture and compare it with the genuine impressions; but I find it of so ephemeral a nature that I can scarcely recall it. All I remember is, that I expected to find the islands low and flat, and mostly of a coral formation. Some of the islands are indeed of this nature, but comparatively few. As we sailed under sunny, cloudless skies, over a brilliantly blue sea, the monarchs of the Caribbees arose one by one in glorious majesty; and especially these Windward Islands, a great windbreak to keep out the big Atlantic, with Martinique the crowning summit. At times, single gigantic rocks, the homes of sea-birds, lonely and desolate, stood out from the deep; and then great ranges of mountains, covered to the summit with densest foliage, lifted themselves to the sky many thousands of feet. It is said with authority that, on these islands—particularly on St. Vincent—there still survive some of the ancient Caribs, the aboriginal West Indian race, no doubt descendants of those brave Indians so harried and murdered by the early Spanish explorers. In Martinique, the mixture of Carib blood is still apparent, showing, even through generations of negro pollution, in many a coppery skin, wild fierce eye, and proud head with straight black locks.
To me it seemed that Martinique is an epitome of the whole West Indies. In appearance, in products, in people, in history, it might taken as the highest type of these garden isles, once enjoyed by vast tribes of pure-blooded and self-respecting savages, but now held by the conglomerate descendants of all colours and all nations.