“Oh, it’s my business,” was the reply of the first speaker, who was one of the officers of the ship. “I have been over this same route for thirty years.”
“What sort of a town is St. Pierre?” inquired the other, a young man, also heavily wrapped.
“It is not of much consequence,” was the answer. “But—but you don’t mean to stay there?”
“No,” was the reply. “I am bound for the interior; I shall take a train tonight, if I can catch it.”
“I should think you would find it rather difficult to get along in this country,” the other remarked. “You say you don’t speak a word of French?”
“No,” was the laughing reply. “I chose German when I was at school, and I don’t know enough of that to hurt me; but where I am going I have a cousin who is in charge of some of the mines, and I suppose I will get along if I can find him.”
“You ought not to have any trouble in that,” replied the officer. “The only railroad depot is very near the wharf.”
The conversation was taking place on board a small coasting steamer, which was making its way slowly through the darkness and storm into the port of the little town of St. Pierre, in French Guiana. The solitary passenger was Henry Roberts, an American, who found himself at last near the end of a long and tedious journey—half by railroad and half by steamer—along the South American coast.
“Four days,” he muttered to himself, “and not a soul to speak to but this one stray fellow-countryman! Between Spanish and French and Dutch my head is in a whirl. Gee whiz! What a night!”
The exclamation was prompted by an unusually violent gust of wind, which flung itself around the edge of the cabin and compelled the passenger to make a precipitate retreat into the hot and ill-lighted interior. However, it was not very long before his impatience was relieved. The vessel was slowing up still more, and he hurried up on deck again, where, from the shouts of the crew, he made out that the dock was near.