My recollection of Martinique and Guadaloupe bring them back to me as lovely green islands of volcanic outline. The former especially struck me as being exceedingly picturesque, its hills covered with pleasant-looking habitations with the peaks of the Carbet veiled in the dark clouds brought by the trade winds, for background. I had to review the troops on the Savana, the promenade of Fort Royal, but I confess I took more interest in the costume of the beautiful quadroons, or quarterbred mulatto women, than in the review itself. This costume is worth describing. A brilliant-coloured bandanna, knotted round the head in the most fanciful manner, no stays of course, nothing but an embroidered chemise, showing a magnificent outline, and a bright-coloured skirt, yellow or rose-coloured, trained at the back, but gathered up on one side, to show a beautiful bare leg. When I add that these women often have a creamy white complexion which many a European would envy, the proud exclamation of the old householder, dragged I know not why before a court of justice, will be appreciated. To the Judge's question "What is your profession?" he replied "My profession! I keep up the supply of Mulattos!" "Je fais des mulatres!" It was in the days of the greatest prosperity of our beautiful Antilles that the old boaster spoke. When I arrived, this was already on the wane, and it really was tiresome not to be allowed to talk about anything but sugar and emancipation by the Creoles.
Nowadays what we call progress has done its work, and these colonies, which used to be an element of national wealth, employing a whole navy of merchantmen, and which served as nursery for the sailors of our warships, are now no more than machines for electing Radical Deputies, and thus increasing the number of agents of the national destruction.
At Martinique, we joined the flag of the admiral in command of the station. I have served under many admirals, one more eccentric than the other. One of the first, an excellent seaman, had one passion only, music—and his instrument was the double bass. He spent his time performing solos on this cumbrous instrument, which he would then put away in a small apartment known in the old-fashioned navy as la bouteille. Sometimes the sea-water came through the port, and flooded everything. When the admiral fetched his double bass out, and began his tunes, he would notice from the sound that the body was full of water, and then every sort of dodge would be resorted to, to get the liquid poured out by the sound holes. The poor admiral! There is a story that his double bass was victim one day of the spite of certain seamen, who marked their displeasure by pouring something less clean than sea-water into the big fiddle. This same gallant admiral having gone ashore once upon a time, at St. Louis in Senegal, and finding the bar there continued so impassable that he could not rejoin his ship, sent her round to Goree, and went there himself overland slung under a camel's belly, and armed with an umbrella,—which proved his complete ignorance of the miracles of the Prophet Mohammed.
My commanding officer at the time of which I write was another oddity. Imagine a thin little man, as hot as pepper, adorned with a hooked nose and chin, one as huge as the other. A real old-fashioned gentleman, always tightly buttoned up in the most irreproachably correct of garments, and with all the exquisite and formal politeness of the old school. Everybody was fond of the good old fellow, who heightened the oddity of his appearance on board his own ship by wearing a huge straw hat like the bell-crowned hat Eugene Sue puts on the head of M. Pipelet in the Mysteres de Paris, and a song had been composed about him, which we used to sing together and the chorus of which began "Bon! bon! de la Bretonniere! Bon Bon!"—la Bretonniere being his name. This same officer saved Admiral Magon's ship after Trafalgar, and later on he commanded the Breslaw at Navarino and showed the most consummate bravery there. His flagship was the Didon, which ship, having run aground several times, had earned the nickname of "Dido the touching" (la touchante Didon). Poor old Didon! I had sailed with her before and the sight of her gave me the same feeling of grateful recollection that stirs within a man who meets an old love. After a short cruise with the whole squadron the admiral led the way to the British island of Jamaica.
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We had hardly cast anchor before he sent to ask the British Governor when he would receive him, and, the appointment duly made, he sent for me to go with him. An aide-de-camp received us at the landing-stage, silently pointed to the governor's carriage, which awaited us, and disappeared. The carriage in question was a phaeton with room for two people in it, and a little seat behind for the groom, who was standing at the horses' heads with true British correctness. Says the admiral to me, "Are we to go in that?"
"Yes, sir."
"But," and he took two steps to the rear, "there isn't any coachman."
"You are to drive yourself, sir."
With a half turn to the right he replied, "I! Impossible! I've never been able to get a horse to go in my life. Do you know how to drive?"