St. Vincent was a different story. Fully two days more steaming brought us thither to that vile haunt of malaria and all things unlovely. The Cape Verde Islands, of which St. Vincent is the principal, dishonour the name they bear, as there is scarce a speck of verdure to be seen upon them. Presumably there must be some natural reason for the naming of the Cape itself on the African coast, off which, nearly five hundred miles northwestward, these scabby isles show their horrid heads above the blue Atlantic. They are of a dirty red colour, and at a distance resemble some humpy monsters of the deep wallowing in the sunshine. The port is useful as a coaling and cable station. A town of shanties, it swarms with negroes, and ships’ pedlars. Here a small colony of young Britons are marooned in the cable service. At first the young cable operator is no doubt delighted to find how much more picturesque he has become than he was at home. To have to wear white duck suits and a pith helmet, and look like Stanley on his way to discover Livingstone, is extremely attractive to the eye of youth! Even the gentleman who sells coals to the liners comes on board looking for all the world like a colonial governor, or the leader of a mission to Abyssinia. Then there is much card-playing and a good deal of hard-drinking among “the boys,” who talk of “the service and all that sort of thing, dontcher know,” to feed youth’s fondness for swagger. But when the debilitating effects of the climate and the life make themselves felt, when the novelty has gone, what a husk remains! Lucky are the young men who escape from these rusty isles before the rot of the place has eaten too deeply into their natures. The harbour swarms with sharks, but the negro boys who dive for the amusement of the passengers on the ships that put in there make light of the sharks for a sixpence, or even for a humble penny thrown into the water.
St. Vincent gave us our last glimpse of the Old World. Its very ugliness sent our thoughts zestfully forward to the undiscovered beauties of the New, then so full of promise, now—but that’s a later story. It was pleasant to hear again the long soft swish of the water running past the vessel’s sides as she resumed her tranquil voyage into the sunset. Now succeeded many days of idle lolling in the deck chair, watching through the binoculars the swarms of flying fish skimming over the surface of the ocean like tiniest aeroplanes.
Bird life in these ocean solitudes is rare, yet we not only saw several journeying on confident wing several hundred miles from land, but for two or three days we were forcibly reminded of “Nature red in tooth and claw,” by witnessing a little drama in feathers. One day out from St. Vincent a bird, about the size of a pigeon, gorgeously coloured and sporting a plume of orange-red, alighted on the rigging of the ship, pursued by a larger hawk-like bird. Evidently the pursuit had lasted for a long time, as both were land birds and seemed very exhausted, for we were now some hundreds of miles from the African coast, whence hunter and hunted had no doubt flown. For two or three days a strange game of cross purposes ensued, the hunted, with the skill of desperation, cleverly selecting different positions in the rigging or on the smoke-stacks, which offered no opportunity to the hunter to swoop down on him from above. There were violent chasings at times around the ship, when the essential cruelty of the Spanish emigrants was displayed in their efforts to strike the pursued bird with all sorts of objects hurled at it as it swept past the bows. Eventually the hawk gave up and disappeared and soon afterward the bird of brilliant plumage took wing away.
Seldom did we sight another vessel; now and again we signalled a tramp or a collier heading south with its cargo from Wales to be sold eventually in Buenos Ayres at some $20 or $25 per ton—it was during the time of the coal strike. One only of the old “wind-jammers” did we pass. In full sail, she looked, in the blue immensity of the tranquil sea, no bigger than a toy boat, and an object of such appropriate grace and beauty that it was sad to think a day would come when no ship that goes by spread of glistening sail would cross those far waters again.
Early on the sixth day out from St. Vincent, on going on deck before breakfast we were not a little surprised to find that we were steaming close to a long and narrow green island on which many signs of careful cultivation were evident. In a cove the white houses of a township showed clear and inviting in the morning air, the blue smoke curling from some of the chimneys giving one an intense pang of home hunger. With the binoculars it was easy to make out people going about their tasks in the fields, others walking towards what seemed to be a signalling station. The surprise at this sudden coming upon a bit of the habitated globe in what, for all we had supposed the night before, was still mid-ocean, sent us questioning to the officers of the ship. The island turned out to be Fernando de Noroña, notable chiefly as a Brazilian penal settlement. A Brazilian—the only one among our company—told me a story about Fernando de Noroña which, speaking in Spanish, he considered muy graciosa. An Englishman in Pernambuco killed a native in a quarrel and was sent to the penal isle, but in the course of a year or less he was granted his liberty, that being a matter of simple negotiation: a little influence and a modicum of money can always save a criminal in that happy clime. But, the Englishman, having long suffered a shrewish wife, found so much peace in prison that he refused to quit the island and there remains. Fernando de Noroña lies some two hundred miles off the north eastern shoulder of Brazil, and by that token we were soon to be touching at Pernambuco and hugging the Brazilian coast for the rest of our voyage.
One felt almost sorry that the sunny days of serene steaming over shoreless seas were coming to an end and that presently we would be picking up the coast of the new world. By now we had grown so used to the companionship of the boat that we began to look forward to leaving it with something of regret.
At Pernambuco we had our first sight of a South American town and I should be departing widely from the truth were I to say that the “Venice of Brazil” tugged at my heart-strings. It is a town of evil-smelling waterways, half-finished streets, at their best no better than a London byway, with cut-throat quarters that harbour all uncleanness. The task of going ashore, first being lowered into a bobbing dingy by means of a rope and basket, is attended with a sensation of nausea which the merry assurance of the old skipper by your side as to the water being a favourite haunt of sharks does little to counteract, especially when his trained eye enables him, a moment or two later, to point out several of these hunting for garbage around the ship. It is fair to say of Pernambuco that it is undergoing transformation: the “avenida” craze has taken root and at the time of our visit innumerable shanties were being demolished to make way for wide avenues and new buildings.
The first sensation of crossing a great sea and making land on its farther shore, once experienced—and it is a “thrill” that never comes again—we sank back into the half-indifferent contemplation of the long, indented coast line of this prodigious land of Brazil. For hundreds of miles it is unchanging in its character of palm-fringed shores, with great dim mountain masses inland, a soft blur of heat overhanging all. There is plenty to suggest mystery and romance, and yet somehow beauty is lacking. I mean the wild beauty of peak and crag which we find along the coasts of Scotland, where the conformation is continually changing. These mountains of Brazil have that volcanic sameness which only becomes magnificent when you can ascend to some commanding pinnacle and look down upon a veritable wilderness of mighty earth mounds, such as it was my good fortune once to look upon from the tower of the ancient castle of Polignac in the volcanic heart of France.
For many nights the tropical skies had been a revelation of stellar glory, and often though I have gazed at the friendly skies of home on “a beautiful clear night of stars” (to quote the haunting phrase of “R. L. S.”), little had I imagined the glories that awaited the beholder of the heavens in a clear tropical night. The stars appear much larger and incomparably more brilliant than I have ever seen them in our northern latitudes, nor do they “stud” the sky so much as hang dependent from the dense dark blue. I had many starlight talks with the old skipper who was travelling to a “shore job” (the dream of every sailor!) on the Pacific, and who spoke of the stars which had guided him so long on his voyages with that familiarity of the worthy old Scots minister “who, ye micht hae thought, had been born and brocht up among them.” Yet I have failed on many occasions since to rediscover the interesting relationships of the constellations which he so clearly explained to me. I confess, however, to a keen sense of disappointment in the much vaunted Southern Cross. It is a lop-sided and unimpressive group of four stars.
The sight of Bahía, about one day’s steam from Pernambuco, was peculiarly pleasing. It might have been a bit of the French or Italian Riviera, with its rich verdure and bosky hills, while the residential suburbs looked quite European as seen from the ship. We made no closer acquaintance than a stay of some three hours in the beautiful bay, but I could well believe that much that looked most alluring in the picturesque sea-front of the town did not bear too close inspection.