Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER NINE
St. Eustatius, Saba, St. Martin, St. Thomas
THIS, we were all agreed, was the proper way to travel in the Caribbean islands.
We weighed anchor at about three, and watched the pretty town of Basseterre slide slowly away to the
south as, luffing and tacking, we beat up the leeward side of St. Kitts. Then it seemed to slide back, for
every breath of air was blocked by the cloudy cone of Mount Misery, and our laborious zigzag of acute
angles was infuriatingly slow. All through the afternoon we wavered along the brilliant green line of palm
trees that rimmed the shore. Fields of sugar-cane swept across the foothills in pale drifts, climbing and
expiring on the flanks of Brimstone Hill, where, spiked with obsolete cannon, the fortress poised its tiers
of battlements. We were virtually becalmed. The outline of St. Eustatius, seven leagues to the north-west,
appeared impossibly remote.
About fifty Negroes from the island of Anguilla had straggled on board the sloop in Basseterre. They
were festooned over the decks among their hastily-packed bundles in jubilant disorder. Our sluggish pro-
gress was soon cheered by a steady downpour of rain, and Joan and Costa and I crawled into a little deck-
house the size of a dog's kennel, where we huddled with our chins upon our knees. At last, just about
nightfall, the
Rose Millicent
slithered past the northern cape of the island, and the Trade Winds hit the sail
with a satisfactory slap of tightening canvas. The skipper heaved the sloop's bowsprit round and pointed
it at the fading silhouette of St. Eustatius. The wind was piercingly cold, and as the ship leapt forward,
we dug out a half-empty bottle and lowered comforting stalactites of whisky down our throats. Night fell,
and the rain stopped. The heads of the Negroes, who had all taken refuge under a tarpaulin like some tre-
mendous recumbent group of statuary before its unveiling, began to appear again round the edge. The two
nearest to us were talking to each other in an incomprehensible language that was neither pidgin English
nor Créole. Many of the words sounded like Spanish, but the flow of the language was suddenly thickened
by noises that were guttural and uncouth. Seeing that I was listening, one of them whispered, '
Papia poco
poco bo tende?
' and their voices dropped. But I understood, with excitement, that they were talking Papia-
mento, that almost mythical compound of Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French, English and African dia-
lects evolved by the slaves of Curaçao and the Dutch islands of the Southern Caribbean.
The sky had cleared, and the mast and rigging, shuddering slowly backwards and forwards as the sloop
rode over the waves, moved through a host of low-flying and brilliant stars, Orion, as usual, dominating all
the other constellations. The boom, straining at the tug of its great sweep of taut sail, was lashed back al-
most parallel with the beam. So full of phosphorus was the sea that the bow-waves rose out of the darkness
like wings of fire and the wake trailed away into the night in a dishevelled tress. It had become warm again,
and I left the hut to sit on some rope and talk to Captain Fleming as he twirled the wheel. This tall and
oddly scholarly-looking man with his long jet black features and steel-rimmed spectacles, was a Seventh
Day Adventist and a native of the little island of Anguilla. The Anguillans live by raising cattle, by col-
lecting and exporting salt, and by ship-building, in which their only rivals are the sailors of Carriacou, far
to the south in the Grenadines. He was an expert shipwright, and he had built the
Rose Millicent
with the
help of his brother and two friends and his great-uncle, who formed the crew of the sloop. This charming,
ragged old man, Uncle Pete, was sitting in the top of a hatchway, with his feet dangling inside. They talked
about the little archipelago for which we were heading; of the white French villagers of St. Barthélémy and
Search WWH ::
Custom Search