I could see that he was much put out about something; so I came to the conclusion that his change of manner, so unlike his usual light-hearted merry self, was due to his grief at parting with me, he having been my constant companion ever since I had been able to toddle about, when my father first settled down on the plantation, at which time I was only a little five-year-old boy and he a darkey stripling.
There was no racing down the road now at breakneck speed, like that time when in my hurry to meet dad I had come to grief some two months previously. Our cavalcade went on at a sober respectable pace, reaching the town in about an hour and a half from our start.
As we were passing by the bend in the road, opposite Government House, whence there was such a good view of the harbour below, Jake spoke to me for the first time during the journey.
“Dar am de ship, Mass’ Tom!” he said, pointing out the Josephine lying out in the anchorage under Fort Saint George.
She was looking much smarter and trimmer, I thought, than when I had first cast eyes on her in Grenville Bay; for her sails were partly loosed, making her have the appearance of an ocean bird ready to be on the wing. I noticed, too, that she floated lower in the water, having evidently taken in a lot more cargo since I had been on board.
When we reached the lower part of the town by the harbour side, after descending the perilously steep Constitution Hill, dad escorted us all to a famed establishment close by, known as “Jenny Gussett’s Hotel,” and kept by a gigantic coloured woman nearly seven feet high, where all the passengers by the mail steamers who had no friends in the island, used invariably to put up. Here, after ordering an early dinner, dad took me out with him to call on a shipping agent at whose place of business he had agreed to meet Captain Miles, leaving my mother and sisters with their crowd of darky attendants at the hotel until we should come back.
The captain was punctual to his appointment like most sailors.
“Ha, Eastman,” he said when dad and I entered the agent’s store, “you’re just in the nick of time. I was only speaking of you a minute ago to our friend here. Got the youngster I see.”
“Yes, here he is,” replied dad.
“That’s all right then,” said Captain Miles. “How are you, Master Tom—glad to go to sea, eh?”