Jamaica’s Blue Mountains, looking with their lordly heads over the wide expanse of a sunlit sea, discerned a white sail. That was no unusual sight to them; but this particular sail seemed, in some way, to be more important than the rest.
It was. Under its wide, unreefed expanse, three youths, a colored and a white man watched eagerly for the closer signs of the island’s harbor at Kingston.
In time they landed, and, after a while, they had secured a conveyance and were whirling out through the lazy streets, noticing with delight the familiar sights, the indolent colored people on the streets and in the shops, the family “flitting” or moving, its colored woman heading the procession with the dining room table balanced on her head, its legs sticking aloft, the family stuff piled within its upturned top; while the children bore their respective loads and the man of the family, as usual, stalked along behind—carrying nothing!
“It’s great to see the cactus again!” grinned Nicky, noting the great plants by the wayside when they left the city and rose into higher ground, seeing cactus plants many feet high, sometimes making a veritable forest with their close-set ranks.
In time Mr. Gray, Cliff’s father, greeted them on the old plantation. They had cabled from Florida before sailing back in Sam’s Treasure Belle.
Many were the greetings exchanged, and long were the tales that had to be told. Nelse and the hi-jackers were in prison.
“Mr. Coleson was let go free,” Nicky explained. “I guess the naval patrol did not want to get into any trouble with the British—or the authorities in Jamaica.”
“It would have brought about complications,” said Mr. Neale. “I understand that Mr. Coleson won’t return to Jamaica.”
“He cabled me,” said Mr. Gray. “He asked me if I wanted to buy this plantation.”
“Will you?” Cliff asked his father, the scholar who wrote many books about ancient civilizations.