The day was mapped out in so many ways by the different passengers of the Caribbeania, that, from their prophetic descriptions, you could hardly recognise it as the same slice out of eternity. There were globe-trotters, eager to trot this tiny section of the globe in hired motor-cars, others anxious to buy souvenirs in Port of the West all day, others nervously determined to call upon the Governor in search of a Vice-regal luncheon, others without imagination desirous of fishing for catfish from the poop, and a very few who dared to avow their intention of spending the day in absorbing cold drinks on the verandah of the King’s Garden Hotel.
In theory the gardener wished to lie upon a chair on the shady side of the deck, with a handkerchief over his face all day. Such a course would have been flattering to his dignity and to his worship of aloofness. In practice his unquenchable energy and that of the suffragette were too much for him. He was vividly stirred by the strange land. The clawlike hands of the palms beckoned him.
Following the suffragette, he bounded on to the first launch as eagerly as though he were not a man of theory. Behind him bounded Courtesy, and behind her Mrs. Paul Rust strove to bound. Courtesy, the gardener, and the suffragette sat squeezed in a row upon a dirty seat in the launch. Mrs. Rust, because sitting in a squeezed row was against her principles, stood. By these means she kept many men-passengers standing in wistful politeness during the whole journey of three miles to the shore.
The bay swept its wide arms farther and farther round them. The palm trees on the promontories on either side of the town looked no longer beckoning, but grasping.
“Oh, isn’t it good!” said the gardener, thrilling so that Courtesy and the suffragette, by reason of compressed propinquity, had to thrill too. He took the suffragette’s hand violently, and waggled it to and fro. “Isn’t it fine ...” and he jumped his feet upon the deck.
“You babies,” said Courtesy. For the suffragette, even though she did not jump her feet, was jumping her eyes, and obviously jumping the heart in her breast. Most unorthodox for a snake.
“We shall run head foremost into the wharf,” said Mrs. Rust in a final voice. “What a pity it is that sailors never know their work.”
“Yes, isn’t it,” agreed the gardener, as if he had been longing to say something of the sort. “Extraordinary. Fine. Won’t it be fine if we run head foremost into the wharf, and sink, to be sealed up in this blue jewel here!”
He tried to pat the bay with his hand.
“Closed in the heart of it,” said the suffragette, “like flies in amber.”