The wonder and beauty of this terrible scene drew exclamations of astonishment from all who were on deck; but after we had sailed a few knots further, the sea of light gradually faded away, and long ere the night-watch were piped down, the waves that rolled around our armament, seemed by contrast darker than ever.
This afforded great matter for speculation among the seamen and Fusiliers of the middle watch; and it was in vain that I endeavoured to explain the theories of the phosphorescent or luminous sea, by describing the light-emitting faculties of the myriads of animalculæ, fish, and slimy substances that float in its depths; for an old tar, who was a great authority on all matters pertaining to salt water, in H.M.S. Adder, asserted on his "solemn davy 'twarnt no such thing—but was a spell laid on the water in these here parts in the old times by some buccaneer, whose ship had been burned after plundering a church in St. Lucia, and had gone down with all hands on board, and in flames of fire to the bottom of the sea, where she would continue to burn till the day of judgment, when we would all be piped out of our graves on deck."
CHAPTER XL.
THE LANDING.
We had a noble run, for the wind continued fresh and fair, we never lifted tack or sheet the whole way, and one morning I was roused early by the announcement that Martinique was in sight. This was on the morning of the 5th of March.
I hastened on deck and could distinctly see the Cardinal's Cap, the most lofty hill in the isle of St. Martin (and a good landmark for mariners) ascending slowly from a sea empurpled by the yet unrisen sun. Since we had left Carlisle Bay, no sail, save the fleet, had been visible. I thought of Rouvigny, whose fleet schooner Les Droits de l'Homme could not be many hours ahead of us—if indeed, he had shaped his course to Martinique—and I hailed the rising land with a glow of stern hope.
As the fleet drew nearer to the shore, two other mountains became visible—the highest being Mont Pelee, a dormant volcano, as lofty as Ben Nevis. It is covered with dark copsewood the density of which attracts the clouds, and from its steep sides innumerable streams descend to water the broad savannahs, where the yellow canes of Java and Tahiti were waving in the breeze, and those fertile fields where coffee, cassia, cotton, and maize are cultivated. Savannah is an old Spanish word, signifying a plain as smooth and level as a sheet.
The race of Caribs in Martinique had long since been totally exterminated; but stories of them, preserved in the voyages of the Buccaneers and the wars of the Spaniards, invested with a species of romance the conical hills of the island, as they rose, higher, greener, and more defined from sea. In the "Excellent Treatise of Antonio Galvano," which contains a history of navigation from the floating of the Ark to his own time in 1555, we are told that the "Caribees are good warriors, who shoot well with the bow; but they poison their arrows with an herb, whereof he that is hurt dieth, biting himself to death as a mad dog doth;" and Peter Martyr, another veracious chronicler, states that Martinique was once inhabited by women alone.
Nearer we drew, and ere long the windmills and houses, the cocoas and palms tossing their broad and fanlike branches, became visible. Then a fort or two, with the tricolour of France waving; and as the wind fell or began to change, and the spicy fragrance of the land reached us, the admiral fired a gun, and signalled to haul up the courses and shorten sail.
The beach of scorched sand seemed white as snow; above it was the wooded country, where forests of strange large leaves were tossing in the wind; and further off still, mellowed faint and blue in cloud and distance, were the summits of the Cardinal's Cap and Mont Pelee, the volcano whose terrors slumbered till 1851.