Here, There and Everywhere

by Lord Frederic Hamilton

There was a little group of coral islands, decked with plumes of cocoa-nut palms, on the other side of the bay, close to a great mangrove swamp, and the Guardsman insisted on our hiring a boat and rowing out there, blazing though the sun was. These mangrove swamps are evil-looking places. The mangrove, the only tree, I believe, that actually grows in salt water, has unnaturally green leaves. The trees grow on things like stilts, digging their roots deep into the foul slime. When the tide is out, these stilts stand grey and naked below the canopy of vivid greenery, and amongst them obscene, crab-like things crawl over the festering black ooze. The water in the labyrinth of channels between the mangroves was thick and discoloured; there was not a breath of air, the heat was unbearable, and the whole place steamed with decay and disease.

Yet somehow the scene seemed very familiar, for one had read of it, again and again, in a hundred boys' books. The same mental process was at work both in myself and in Joss, but it took different forms. I composed in my mind a chapter of a thrilling romance. "Suddenly down one of the glassy channels between the mangroves we saw the pirate felucca approaching us rapidly. She had got out her sweeps and looked like some gigantic water-insect as she made her way towards us, churning the sleeping waters into foam. At her tiller stood a tall form, which I recognised with a shudder as that of the villainous mulatto Pedro, and her black flag drooped limply in the stagnant air. Our gallant captain at once ordered our carronades to be loaded with canister, and then addressed the crew. 'Yonder gang of dastardly miscreants think to capture us, my lads,' cried Captain Trueman, 'but little they know the material they have to deal with. Even the boys, Bob and Jim, young as they are, will show them the sort of stuff a British tar is made of, if I am not mistaken.' On hearing our gallant captain's noble words, Jim and I exchanged a silent hand-grip, and Jim, snatching up a matchlock, levelled it at the head of the mulatto Pedro, but at that very moment," etc., etc., etc., though I much fear that the remainder of Bob, the Boy Buccaneer of the Bahamas will remain unwritten.

Our surroundings suggested the same idea to Joss, but were prompting the Guardsman to more direct action. From one or two of his remarks I had foreseen the possibility of his making an incredible suggestion to me, and gradually suspicion ripened into horrified certainty.

"Would you very much mind—" he began, "at least if you are not too old—I should so like—we shall never get another opportunity like this—would you very much mind—" and out it came, "playing at pirates for a little while?"

It was unthinkable! The Guardsman was actually proposing to a staid, middle-aged gentleman of forty-eight, an ex-Member of Parliament, a church-warden, and an ex-editor, to play at pirates with him, as though he were ten years old. I pointed out how unusual it was for an officer in the Coldstream, aged twenty-six, to think even of so puerile an amusement, but to include a dignified, earnest-minded, elderly man in the invitation was really an unprecedented outrage. My justifiable indignation increased when I found that the Guardsman actually expected me at my age to enact the role of "Carlos, the Cut-throat of the Caribbean."

Our discussion was interrupted by a violent shivering fit which seized me, accompanied by a sudden, racking headache. The swamps had done their work on the previous evening. By night-time I was in a high fever, and when we returned to Kingston next day by train, I, with a temperature up to anywhere, was hardly conscious of where I was or what I was doing.

I was put to bed at King's House, and the fever rapidly turned to malarial gastritis. The distressing feature connected with this complaint is that it is impossible to retain any nourishment whatever. An attack of fever is so common in hot countries that this would not be worth mentioning, except as an example of the curious way in which Nature sometimes prompts her own remedy. The doctor tried half the drugs in the pharmacopoeia on me, the fever simply laughed at them all. Nothing could have exceeded the kindness of Sir Alexander and Lady Swettenham during my illness, but as I could take no nourishment of any kind, I naturally grew very weak. The doctor urged me to cancel my passage and await the next steamer to England, but something told me that as soon as I felt the motion of a ship under me, the persistent sickness would stop. I also felt sure that were I to remain in Jamaica another fortnight, I should remain there permanently, and gruesome memories haunted me of an undertaker's shop in Kingston, which displayed a prominent sign, "Handsome black and gold funeral goods" (note the euphemism!) "delivered in any part of the city within two hours of telephone call." As I had no desire to make a more intimate acquaintance with the "funeral goods," however handsome, I insisted on being carried down to the mail-steamer, and was put to bed in the liner. It was blowing very fresh, and we heard that there was a heavy sea outside. As long as we lay alongside the jetty in the smooth waters of the harbour, the distressing symptoms persisted at their regular intervals, but no sooner had the ship cleared Port Royal and begun to lift to the very heavy sea outside, than the sickness stopped as though by magic. The Port Kingston, of the now defunct Imperial Direct West India Mail Line, was really a champion pitcher, for she had an immense beam for her length, and a great amount of top-hamper in the way of deck-houses. As the violent motion continued, I was able to take as much food as I wanted with impunity, and next day, the heavy seas still tossing the Port Kingston about like a cork, I was up and about, perfectly well, free from fever and able, as Lady Nugent would have said, "to eat like a cormorant." I noted, however, that the motion of the ship seemed to produce on most of the passengers an exactly opposite effect to what it did on myself.

The voyage from Jamaica, by that line, was rather a trying one, for in the interest of the cargo of bananas, the Captain steered straight for the Newfoundland Banks, so in five days the temperature dropped from 90 degrees to 40 degrees, and the unfortunate West Indian passengers would cower and shiver in their thickest clothes over the radiators, where the steam hissed and sizzled.

Before we had been at sea two days, we heard of a most gallant act that had been done by one in our midst. The mail-boats of the Imperial Direct Line each carried from six to eight apprentices, young lads in process of training as officers in the Merchant Service. The apprentices on board the Port Kingston had had a great deal of hard work whilst the ship was loading her cargo of fruit at Port Henderson previous to our voyage home, so the Captain granted them all a holiday, lent them one of the ship's boats, provided them with luncheon and fishing lines, and sent them out for a day's sailing and fishing in Kingston Harbour.

They sailed and caught fish, and, as the afternoon wore on, began to "rag," as boys will do. They ragged so effectually that they managed to capsize the boat, and were, all of them, thrown into the water.