Amid such varied changes of life and scene, our three weeks’ voyage from Teneriffe to Barbados passed quickly and pleasantly enough, all hands being surprised one fine morning when we cast anchor in Carlisle Bay, the harbour of ‘Little England,’ as the Barbadians proudly style their happy island, which is of the same size and shape nearly as the Isle of Wight and is the gem of the Antilles!
Here we had a rare time of it for a week, it being Christmastide, and the inhabitants, who are English to the backbone, black, mongrel, and copper-coloured, as well as white, keeping up that festival with like enthusiasm to what we do at home.
As at Madeira, the ship’s company were allowed leave to go on shore, watch and watch in turn: so, belonging as we both did to the starboard division, Mick and I were amongst those who had the first go-off.
I recollect, as if it were but yesterday, our landing alongside the jetty on the carenage, right in front of one of Da Costa’s big warehouses, whose green jalousies relieved the effect of the staring white building under the hot West Indian sun; the glare of which, cast back by the rippling translucent water that laved the stone jetty, through which one could see the little fishes gliding about as clearly as in the Brighton Aquarium, almost blinded us with its intensity.
There were a lot of negro women hanging round the wharf in front of Da Costa’s place, all of whom had big baskets, either balanced on their heads or put down on the ground by their side, which were filled with huge melons and pine-apples and bananas, besides many other tropical fruits the names of which are unknown to me.
Of course, we made for these at once; and there was a lot of chaffering and bargaining between our fellows and the negresses, who were all laughing and showing their white teeth, trying their best to wheedle the ‘man-o’-war buckras’ to buy their luscious wares at double the price, probably, such would fetch in open market from regular customers in Bridgetown.
Presently, we all got skylarking and pitching the fruit about; when a big mulatto, who was along with one of the fruit-sellers—her husband most likely and doing nothing just as likely, like most of his colour, for the household of which he was the head, save to collect the money his better half in every respect earned—seemed very much aggrieved at some damage Mick did to a bunch of ripe bananas, claiming a ‘bit’ or fourpence as compensation.
Mick, who, you must know, had grown a strapping fellow by now, took the tawny-complexioned gentleman’s demand very good-humouredly.
“All roight, ould Patchwork,” he called out, with a laugh. “Thare’s a shellin’ fur ye, which is more, bedad, than yer howl sthock-in-thrade is worth! Changee fur changee, black dog fur whoite moonkey, sure, as my ould fayther used fur to say!”
Whatever mollifying effect the sight of the silver coin might have produced on the mulatto’s mind was entirely swamped by Mick’s unfortunate quotation from his paternal archives.