Martinique - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 33

A letter from the same friend in Paris—the Vicomte d'Aurigny—who had opened for us in Guadeloupe
the gates of Raoul's companionship and munificence, performed the same kind office in Martinique with
one of Raoul's many uncles; and within twenty-four hours of our arrival in the island we found ourselves
travelling eastwards across Martinique by motor-car with Monsieur de Jaham and half a dozen other
guests. Our destination was a little house on the windward coast of the island which was used as a kind
of holiday house for fishing and bathing; perdu dans le bled , as our host termed it; and our expedition
was really a vast picnic. A truck followed our two motor-cars, laden with ice and food and drink and two
servants whose enormous and permanent grins showed that they enjoyed the prospect of this departure
as much as we did. The charm and gaiety of our host, and his tremendous high spirits, augured well from
the start.
The first part of the journey ran through the plain of Lamentin, a low, undulating country almost as
tame and familiar as Kent. But as the day waned, it ascended into a wilder region. Our caravan rattled
through the streets of Bourg under a deluge of rain and out again into a country of steep, tufted mornes
in the foothills of Mount Vauclin, where the road turned into a river of mud. Dark and rainy corridors
of sugar-cane met over the tops of the car. We rounded a small hill, and stopped beside a clump of trees
under which sheltered the shape of a house. A hundred yards away, the sea murmured quietly.
Lights appeared in the windows, like the eyes of a sleeper opening, a flicker first and then bright
streams of golden light that poured out over the grass as the wicks of petrol lamps were turned up. A
large Negro woman and two lesser servants emerged with joyful quacks of welcome, holding lanterns in
their hands. It was quite dry again, and soon we were sitting in deck-chairs under the trees in the warm
night, while, by lamplight, Monsieur de Jaham, with the benevolent officiousness of a Cheeryble brother,
peeled limes and cut into the nutmeg for the petit punch . In went the lemon-peel and lime and nutmeg,
the water, the sugar, the white rum, each addition accompanied by a flow of entertaining discourse that
was only silenced by the sound of the long wooden swizzle-stick. After long and delectable libations,
Modestine, the cook, called us indoors for dinner. This meal is memorable, apart from its other charms,
by a first encounter with sea-eggs, the contents of smooth, hard white globes like spineless white sea-
urchins, whose contents—a kind of reddish-brown roe—are scooped out and fried in butter. Afterwards,
with roast pork, we had beignets of breadfruit, the first time we had encountered this vegetable. It tasted,
in this form, lighter and better than any imaginable potato. Bottle after bottle of iced Riesling accompan-
ied this journey of gastronomic discovery.
Dinner finished about midnight. We rose from the table to fish for lobsters, singing as we walked
down to the seashore, with our cigar-smoke lingering about us in the still air. Under a little spinney of
manchineel trees, the boat was tethered to a jetty. The weather was warm and mild, and the water was so
phosphorescent that a hand in it, or the darting of a fish, shone like silver, and a diving figure was plumed
with a blazing whirl of subaqueous fire. But as we sailed out into the bay, a pale moon rose through the
milky clouds and drowned all this phosphorescent glitter with its greater radiance. A little way out, we
found two Negroes walking knee-deep in the shallow water, pacing as warily as Mohicans, and gazing at
the weedy floor of the sea, every detail of which stood out in the glare of a flaming torch that one of them
held: a cylinder containing some bright-burning chemical that they call a Serbie . The other was armed
with a long forked stick. Every now and then he would stop and raise his hand. Our strange procession
would halt, and like lightning the forked stick descended to imprison a lobster as it peered from the weeds
at the unaccustomed light. Then the torch-bearer would seize the struggling captive by its middle and
fling it into the boat which we were urging through the water behind him like tow-path horses. The pro-