The summit of a gentle eminence brought me in sight of Carlisle Bay, where our fleet, in all the pride of British men-of-war, rode at anchor in two long lines, astern of the towering three-decker of Sir John Jervis. They made a gallant and a stately show, with yards squared and rigging taught as iron; their scarlet ensigns and white pennants waving in the wind, and their black cannon peering grimly through the open ports. The dark blue water, the reflection of a clear blue sky, rolled in tiny ripples to the green copse wood or golden sand which edged the shore. A white foam, the precursor of sea breeze, was cresting every tiny wavelet that came into the lovely bay; beyond the ample bosom of which the Caribbean sea spread in vast immensity away, till lost in distance, haze, and the purple glow of the set sun.
At a part of the path where the sugar-canes grew like a reedy wall on either hand, but still afforded a view of the anchored fleet, a person approached, in whom, at once, I recognised the priest, the companion of Dick Knuckleduster, and the negro, in the boat or piragua, that stole so secretly along the inlet, under the mangroves and calibash-trees. He approached a fallen tree on which I was seated, and, politely lifting his hat, bowed low, and bade me "good evening," in the purest French.
He seemed disposed to enter into conversation, but though his manner was suave and polite, his appearance was far from prepossessing. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and muscular. His head was set on a thick bull-neck, while the conformation of his square jaws, large ears, placed high and near his narrow temples, with a nose somewhat hooked yet flattened, gave him a fierce and tiger-like aspect; which his keen sinister black eyes, and an old wound that traversed his forehead, in no way lessened or improved. He was closely shaved, but the roots of his black beard studded his chin with blue dots as if it had been scorched with powder sparks. I had—I knew not altogether why—an undefinable repugnance for, and a suspicion of, this clerical personage, who deliberately seated himself beside me, on one of those fallen palms which one may frequently see after a storm in Barbadoes, where they seem then to take root at both ends and sprout with renewed vigour.
"Monsieur is a Frenchman?" said I.
"Monsieur le Soldat is right—I am a Frenchman."
"A rash admission at this time."
"Not for one of my mission in life," said he meekly.
"You are, I think, a priest?"
"Right again—I am a priest."
"An emigrant, of course."