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fect in words that struck me as far better than any head prefect's speech I had ever heard at school. After
a series of hip-hoorays, the stage was filled by the school choir, which, like the actors and prize-winners
and athletes, represented every variation of the St. Lucian population; England and France and Africa
in about equal proportions. In the programme, I noticed that English names outnumbered the French by
almost two to one. The school song was rousingly delivered—
'Step together, play the game,
Thus we'll bring St. Mary's fame.
Unity will make us strong,
Love will guide our steps along.
Love indeed our lives will frame,
Love for God which cares not whether
Foes smite
Left, right.
We Samarians work together;
Steady, boys, and step together!'
It was all very impressive and nostalgic.
God Save the King
was immediately preceded by the Neapolitan
song
Santa Lucia
; and the proceedings broke up.
Santa Lucia
seems to have been adopted as the national anthem of the island (whose name is pro-
nounced St. Loosha).
[5]
As the next day was the feast day of the Saint, and a great island holiday, I heard
it sung many times. It came to the public rescue in notable circumstances in the evening, when a compet-
ition was billed to take place in the bandstand between rival jazz-band orchestras. The whole of Castries
was assembled in the square. But an earlier item on the programme was the recitation of
The Lifeboat
,
by Service. This contemporary poem, which I had never heard before, deals with the return of a prodigal
son to his little village in Cornwall in the middle of a storm. His father, the lifeboatman, lies dying, and a
ship is foundering on the rocks. The son, who has always been a waster, is greeted by the reproaches of
his parents, and, stung by their scorn, he goes out into the tempest and rescues the whole crew, I think,
single-handed. The story is told by an old sailorman at unbelievable length and in Cornish dialect. After
about an hour of it, the St. Lucians were plainly unable to stand much more, and the groans and protests
became more frequent. The situation was solved at last by one of the musicians quietly playing
Santa
Lucia
on the saxophone. Others joined in one by one, and the song was taken up by the crowd until the
speaker was inaudible. Only his gestures and the movements of his lips hinted that the Cornish storm was
still raging. I was rather sorry, because I wanted to know how it ended.
Perhaps the adoption of this song is not as arbitrary as it seems at first. After all, Columbus discovered
the island on St. Lucy's day, and she was an island saint—a Sicilian—and Neapolitan is fairly close to
her own vernacular. '
Elle triompha à Syracuse
,' writes Dom Guéranger, '
comme Agathe brille à Catane,
comme Rosalie embaume Palerme de ses parfums
.' She certainly came triumphantly to the rescue of her
distant devotees on this occasion.
The line that the aeroplane followed through the air was a recapitulation of our earlier journeys: the Dia-
mond Rock, Martinique, Dominica, Marie Galante, the Saints, the Désirade, Guadeloupe—they seemed
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