After breakfast, they all hurried up on deck once more, and soon the gray peaks and rocky sierras of Trinidad began to heave in sight straight in front of them. Slowly the land drew closer and closer, till at last the port and town lay full in sight before them. Dr Whitaker was overflowing with excitement as they reached the wharf. ‘In ten minutes,’ he cried to Marian—‘in ten minutes, I shall see my dear father.’
It was a strange and motley scene, ever fresh and interesting to the new-comer from Europe, that first glimpse of tropical life from the crowded deck of an ocean steamer. The Severn stood off, waiting for the gangways to be lowered on board, but close up to the high wooden pier of the lively, bustling, little harbour. In front lay the busy wharf, all alive with a teeming swarm of black faces—men in light and ragged jackets, women in thin white muslins and scarlet turbans, children barefooted and half naked, lying sprawling idly in the very eye of the sun. Behind, white houses with green venetian blinds; waving palm-trees; tall hills; a blazing pale blue sky; a great haze of light and shimmer and glare and fervour. All round, boats full of noisy negroes, gesticulating, shouting, swearing, laughing, and showing their big teeth every second anew in boisterous merriment. A general pervading sense of bustle and life, all meaningless and all ineffectual; much noise and little labour; a ceaseless chattering, as of monkeys in a menagerie; a purposeless running up and down on the pier and ’longshore with wonderful gesticulations; a babel of inarticulate sounds and cries and shouting and giggling. Nothing of it all clearly visible as an individual fact at first; only a confused mass of heads and faces and bandanas and dresses, out of which, as the early hubbub of arrival subsided a little, there stood forth prominently a single foremost figure—the figure of a big, heavy, oily, fat, dark mulatto, gray-haired and smooth-faced, dressed in a dirty white linen suit, and waving his soiled silk pocket-handkerchief ostentatiously before the eyes of the assembled passengers. A supple, vulgar, oleaginous man altogether, with an astonishing air of conceited self-importance, and a profound consciousness of the admiring eyes of the whole surrounding negro populace.
‘How d’ye do, captain?’ he shouted aloud in a clear but thick and slightly negro voice, mouthing his words with much volubility in the true semi-articulate African fashion. ‘Glad to see de Severn has come in puncshual to her time as usual. Good ship, de Severn; neber minds storms or nuffin.—Well, sah, who have you got on board? I’ve come down to meet de doctor and Mr Hawtorn. Trinidad is proud to welcome back her children to her shores agin. Got ’em on board, captain?—got ’em on board, sah?’
‘All right, Bobby,’ the captain answered, with easy familiarity. ‘Been having a pull at the mainsheet this morning?—Ah, I thought so. I thought you’d taken a cargo of rum aboard. Ah, you sly dog! You’ve got the look of it.’
‘Massa Bobby, him doan’t let de rum spile in him cellar,’ a ragged fat negress standing by shouted out in a stentorian voice. ‘Him know de way to keep him from spilin’, so pour him down him own troat in time—eh, Massa Bobby?’
‘Rum,’ the oily mulatto responded cheerfully, but with great dignity, raising his fat brown hand impressively before him—‘rum is de staple produck an’ chief commercial commodity of de great an’ flourishin’ island of Trinidad. To drink a moderate quantity of rum every mornin’ before brekfuss is de best way of encouragin’ de principal manufacture of dis island. I do my duty in dat respeck, I flatter myself, as faithfully as any pusson in de whole of Trinidad, not exceptin’ His Excellency de governor, who ought to set de best example to de entire community. As de recognised representative of de coloured people of dis colony, I feel bound to teach dem to encourage de manufacture of rum by my own pussonal example an’ earnest endeavour.’ And he threw back his greasy neck playfully in a pantomimic representation of the art of drinking off a good glassful of rum-and-water.
The negroes behind laughed immoderately at this sally of the man addressed as Bobby, and cheered him on with loud vociferations. ‘Evidently,’ Edward said to Nora, with a face of some disgust, ‘this creature is the chartered buffoon and chief jester to the whole of Trinidad. They all seem to recognise him and laugh at him, and I see even the captain himself knows him well of old, evidently.’
‘Bless your soul, yes,’ the captain said, overhearing the remark. ‘Everybody in the island knows Bobby. Good-natured old man, but conceited as a peacock, and foolish too.—Everybody knows you here,’ raising his voice; ‘don’t they, Bobby?’
The gray-haired mulatto took off his broad-brimmed Panama hat and bowed profoundly. ‘I flatter myself,’ he said, looking round about him complacently on the crowd of negroes, ‘dere isn’t a better known man in de whole great an’ flourishin’ island of Trinidad dan Bobby Whitaker.’
Edward and Marian started suddenly, and even Nora gave a little shiver of surprise and disappointment. ‘Whitaker,’ Edward repeated slowly—‘Whitaker—Bobby Whitaker!—You don’t mean to tell us, surely, captain, that that man’s our Dr Whitaker’s father!’