Jamaica - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 223

Emmanuel shouted and his voice came echoing back from the wall of rock at the other end, and then the
silence settled again.
'A cockpit,' Emmanuel said.
He led us across the silent place to a cleft in the rock wall. Scrambling with hands and feet up a ladder
of limestone boulders and then twisting through the tree trunks and the creepers, we climbed into a second
abysmal corridor which brought us, after a heart-breaking scramble, into another cockpit slightly larger
than the first and equally sinister and silent. And so the country continues for many miles, proliferating
in all ways: an endless maze of gullies and hollows running through a chaos of limestone and forest.
A stranger can wander for days through this without finding the way out. We began to understand the
misgivings that must have oppressed the files of Redcoats as they advanced through these endless con-
volutions of rock. The noonday sun falls into them perpendicularly and heats the stagnant air to stifling
point. The motionless vegetation begins to vacillate before the retina. All is hostile and withdrawn, and
the meridian demon that is the genius of the place binds the air and the rocks and the forest in a con-
spiracy to send the intruder to Coventry. And how much more frightening, when, from the still girdle of
woods, might blow at any second a tempest of Maroon bullets, while the gunfire and the wailing horns
shattered this spellbound vacuum with a sudden pandemonium of echoes….
As though reading our thoughts and feeling that it was indelicate to keep us longer in such surround-
ings, Emmanuel conducted us through a hidden corridor into a peaceful valley at the bottom of which
a stream ran merrily under the pimento trees. We watched his tall figure running and leaping barefoot
downhill, negotiating the rocks with an agility that left us plodding far behind. One hand grasped an an-
tiquated fowling-piece with a long barrel, and each leap made his cutlass slap against his thigh. He was a
few years younger than Colonel Rowe, he was not quite sure how many. He must, he thought, be some-
where in his late seventies. Lean, erect, athletic and indefatigable, an expression of friendliness and alac-
rity radiated from his bright eyes and informed his impulsive and eager way of talking.
By the time we caught up with him he had cut and spread some leaves under a tree and filled a calabash
with water. He carefully halved four avocadoes with his cutlass. Afterwards, puffing at his little home-
made pipe, he discoursed of old hunts after the wild boars that live in the forests. He told us of the guile
and savagery of the beasts and the special bullets needed for penetrating their hide. The pursuit of one
particular enemy had lasted for days. When, quite alone and miles from any habitation, he had laid it low
at last, the beast proved too heavy to carry. He had cut it up and hidden it, and carried some of the carcase
back to the village, sending his friends to recover the remainder. It was the biggest wild hog (we learnt
later in the village) that had been shot for over a hundred years. I cannot remember when Emmanuel said
that the beast was killed—I think when he was a very young man; in the late 1880's or the early 90's
perhaps…. To celebrate the event there was a great banquet of rum and jerked hog; pork, that is, sliced
and smoked over a slow fire. When Joan asked him what it had tasted like, he joined his hands in prayer,
and turned his eyes to heaven.
We felt weary after our trek through the Cockpit Country, and Emmanuel's quiet voice and the cooing
of the ring-tailed pigeons slowly lulled us to sleep. When we awoke, evening was coming on. Emmanuel
led us home through a region of calm savannah with long evening shadows streaming down the slopes.
He interrupted his recollections now and then to tell us the names of the fields and valleys through which
we were passing: Good Hope, Hill Middle, Saucy Train Cross-roads, New Lumber Road, the Old Mill.
We strolled down the valley leading to Accompong, past scattered huts and gardens where the ginger was
laid out to dry in armies of tiny gesticulating manikins. The forest ruffled in the breeze, and the silhouette