answered Magee like a flash.
The drive from Brown"s Town across the centre of the island to Mandeville is one of the most beautiful things that can be imagined.
It can only be undertaken with mules, and then requires twelve hours, the road running through the heart of the ginger-growing district, of which Boroughbridge is the headquarters. The Guardsman was more than ever confirmed in his opinion that Jamaica was only a growing grocer"s shop, especially as we had pa.s.sed through dense groves of nutmeg-trees in the morning. I have a confused recollection of deep valleys traversed by rushing, clear streams, of towering pinnacles of rock, and of lovely forest glades, the whole of them clothed with the most gorgeous vegetation that can be conceived, of strange and unfamiliar shapes glowing with unknown blossoms, with blue mountains in the distance. It was one ever-changing panorama of loveliness, with beauty of outline, beauty of detail, and unimaginable beauty of colour.
We were forced to return to Kingston, for a French Cruiser Squadron was paying a prolonged visit to Jamaica, and the Governor required my services as interpreter.
That visit of the French Fleet was quite an historical event, for it was the first outward manifestation of the Anglo-French Entente. The Anglo-French Convention had been signed two years previously, on April 8, 1904. I cannot say with whom the idea of terminating the five-hundred-year-old feud between Britain and France originated, but I know who were the instruments who translated the idea into practical effect: they were M. Paul Cambon, French Amba.s.sador in London, and my brother-in-law, Lord Lansdowne, then Foreign Secretary; between them they smoothed down asperities, removed ancient grievances, and lubricated points of contact where friction might arise. No one, probably, antic.i.p.ated at the time the tremendous consequences of the Anglo-French Convention, nor dreamed that it was destined, after the most terrible conflict of all time, to change the entire history of the world.
In the early part of 1905 the Emperor William had made his theatrical triumphal progress through the Turkish dominions, and on March 31 of the same year he landed at Tangier in great state. What exact agreement the Emperor concluded with the Sultan of Morocco we do not know, but from that moment the French met with nothing but difficulties in Morocco, their own particular "sphere of influence"
under the Anglo-French Convention. All the reforms proposed by France were flouted by the Sultan, and Germans claimed equal commercial and economic rights with the French. A conference met at Algeciras on January 10, 1906, to settle these and other disputed questions, but the French authorities viewed the situation with the utmost anxiety.
They were convinced that the "mailed fist" would be brandished in their faces on the smallest provocation, and that the French Navy might have to intervene.
Now came the first visible result of the _entente_. The British Government offered the hospitality of Kingston Harbour, with coaling facilities, for an unlimited period to the French Cruiser Squadron, then in the West Indies. Kingston is not only the finest harbour in the Antilles, but the coaling arrangements are far superior to any in the French ports, and, most important point of all, Kingston would be some twenty-four hours steaming nearer to Gibraltar and the Mediterranean, in case of emergency, than the French islands of Guadeloupe or Martinique.
The arrival, then, of the French Fleet was a great event, and, acting possibly on a hint from home, every attention was shown to the French officers by the Governor, Sir Alexander Swettenham. He entertained forty French officers to luncheon at King"s House, and his French having grown rather rusty, asked me to welcome them in his name. I took great care in preparing my speech, and began by ascertaining whether any of the reporters who would be present understood French. I was much relieved to find that not one of them knew a single word of the language, for that gave me a free hand. The table, on the occasion of the luncheon, was decorated in a fashion only possible in the West Indies. One end of the table glowed, a scarlet carpet of the splendid flowers of the _Amherstia n.o.bilis_, looking like red satin ta.s.sels, then came a carpet of the great white trumpets of the _Beaumontia_, on a ground of white stephanotis. Lastly a blue carpet of giant solanums, interspersed with the dainty blue blossoms of the _Petraea_, the whole forming the most magnificent tricolour flag imaginable. The French officers much appreciated this attention.
I spoke for twenty minutes, and fairly let myself go. With a feeling of security due to the inability of the reporters to follow French, I said the most abominably indiscreet things, considering that it was an official entertainment in an official residence, but I think that I must have been quite eloquent, for, when I sat down, the French Admiral crossed the room and shook hands warmly with me, saying, "Monsieur, au nom de la France je vous remercie."
Joss, the Guardsman, struck up an intimate alliance with a young French naval lieutenant of his own age. As the Guardsman knew just two words of French, and the Frenchman was totally ignorant of English, I cannot conceive how they understood one another, but they seemed to take great delight in each other"s society, exploring together every corner of Kingston, both by day and by night, addressing each other as "Henri, old man," or "Joss vieux copain," and jabbering away incessantly, each in his own tongue.
Lady Swettenham, the Governor"s wife, paid a formal visit to the Admiral on board his flag-ship, the _Desaix_, and I accompanied her. The Admiral told Lady Swettenham that she and Lady Lathom, who was with her, must consent to be tied up with ribbons bearing the ship"s name, the French naval fashion of doing honour to ladies of distinction. The Flag-Lieutenant came in and took a good look at the ladies" dresses; Lady Swettenham being in white, Lady Lathom in pale mauve. Presently "Flags" reappeared bearing white and mauve ribbons (of the exact shade of her dress) for Lady Lathom, and pale pink and blue ones for Lady Swettenham, each about four yards long.
Proverbially gallant as are British naval officers, the idea of first studying the ladies" dresses would not have occurred to them; that little touch requires a Frenchman. We wished to take our leave, but the Admiral begged us to remain; there was evidently something coming.
It was an intensely hot afternoon, and the heavy, red-plush furniture and curtains of the Admiral"s cabin seemed to add to the heat. His face wore the expression some people a.s.sume when they are preparing a treat for a child. "Flags" looked in and nodded. "Faites entrer alors," ordered the Admiral, still smiling, and a steward came in bearing six bottles of Guinness" stout. "You see that I know what you like," added the Admiral, beaming. On a broiling hot afternoon in Jamaica, tepid stout is the very last thing in the world that one would choose to drink, but the Admiral was convinced that it was the habitual beverage of all English people, and had actually sent his steward ash.o.r.e to procure the precious liquid. It was a delicate attention, but it so happened that both ladies had a positive aversion to stout; they drank it bravely notwithstanding, and we all a.s.sumed expressions of intense delight, to the Admiral"s immense gratification.
It was the Admiral"s first visit to the West Indies, and he did not like them. "Non, madame. Des nuits sans fraicheur, des fleurs sans odeur, des fruits sans saveur, des femmes sans pudeur; voila les Antilles!"
The Guardsman and I, anxious to see more of this lovely island, went off by train to the western extremity of Jamaica. The engineer who surveyed the Jamaican Government Railway must have been an extremely eccentric individual. There is a comparatively level and very fertile belt near the sea-coast, extending right round the island. Here nearly all the produce is grown. Instead of building his railway through this flat, thickly populated zone, the engineer chose to construct his line across the mountain range of the interior, a district very spa.r.s.ely inhabited, and hardly cultivated at all. The Jamaica Government Railway is admirably designed if regarded as a scenic railway, but is hardly successful if considered as a commercial undertaking. The train winds slowly through the "c.o.c.kpit" country; now panting laboriously up steep inclines, now sliding down a long gradient, with a prodigious grinding of brakes and squeaking of wheels. The scenery is gorgeous, but there is no produce to handle at the various stations, and but few pa.s.sengers to pick up. As we found every hotel full at our destination, we had to take refuge in a boarding-house, though warned that it was only for coloured people. We found four subfuse young men, with complexions shaded from pale coffee-colour to deep sepia, at supper in the dining-room.
"May I inquire, sir," said the Guardsman, with ready tact, to the lightest-complexioned of the young men, "how long you have been out from England?"
"I was born in Jamaica, sir," answered the immensely gratified youth, "and have never left it."
"And do you, sir," continued the Guardsman to the swarthiest of them all, "feel the heat of the climate much? It is rather a change from England, isn"t it?"
"I, too, sir, have never left Jamaica," replied the delighted young man.
So enchanted were these dusky youths at having been mistaken for white men, that they simply overwhelmed us with attentions during the rest of our stay there.
The Guardsman was bent on shooting an alligator, and having heard that these pleasant saurians swarmed in a swamp beyond the town, went there at dusk with his rifle, and I, very foolishly, was induced to accompany him. There is something most uncanny in these tracts of swamp at nightfall. The twisted, distorted trees, the gleaming, evil-smelling pools of water, and the immense, snake-like lianes hanging from the branches all give one a curious sense of unreality, especially on a moonlight night. It is like a Gustave Dore drawing of a bewitched forest. The Guardsman splashed about in the shallow water, but never a sign of an alligator did we see. Giant tortoises crawled lazily about, just visible in the half-light under the trees; innumerable land-crabs scurried to and fro, and unclean reptiles pattered over the fetid ooze, but we saw no more alligators than we should have seen in St. James"s Park.
There was a little group of coral islands, decked with plumes of cocoa-nut palms, on the other side of the bay, close to a great mangrove swamp, and the Guardsman insisted on our hiring a boat and rowing out there, blazing though the sun was. These mangrove swamps are evil-looking places. The mangrove, the only tree, I believe, that actually grows in salt water, has unnaturally green leaves. The trees grow on things like stilts, digging their roots deep into the foul slime. When the tide is out, these stilts stand grey and naked below the canopy of vivid greenery, and amongst them obscene, crab-like things crawl over the festering black ooze. The water in the labyrinth of channels between the mangroves was thick and discoloured; there was not a breath of air, the heat was unbearable, and the whole place steamed with decay and disease.
Yet somehow the scene seemed very familiar, for one had read of it, again and again, in a hundred boys" books. The same mental process was at work both in myself and in Joss, but it took different forms. I composed in my mind a chapter of a thrilling romance. "Suddenly down one of the gla.s.sy channels between the mangroves we saw the pirate felucca approaching us rapidly. She had got out her sweeps and looked like some gigantic water-insect as she made her way towards us, churning the sleeping waters into foam. At her tiller stood a tall form, which I recognised with a shudder as that of the villainous mulatto Pedro, and her black flag drooped limply in the stagnant air.
Our gallant captain at once ordered our carronades to be loaded with canister, and then addressed the crew. "Yonder gang of dastardly miscreants think to capture us, my lads," cried Captain Trueman, "but little they know the material they have to deal with. Even the boys, Bob and Jim, young as they are, will show them the sort of stuff a British tar is made of, if I am not mistaken." On hearing our gallant captain"s n.o.ble words, Jim and I exchanged a silent hand-grip, and Jim, s.n.a.t.c.hing up a matchlock, levelled it at the head of the mulatto Pedro, but at that very moment," etc., etc., etc., though I much fear that the remainder of _Bob, the Boy Buccaneer of the Bahamas_ will remain unwritten.
Our surroundings suggested the same idea to Joss, but were prompting the Guardsman to more direct action. From one or two of his remarks I had foreseen the possibility of his making an incredible suggestion to me, and gradually suspicion ripened into horrified certainty.
"Would you very much mind--" he began, "at least if you are not too old--I should so like--we shall never get another opportunity like this--would you very much mind--" and out it came, "playing at pirates for a little while?"
It was unthinkable! The Guardsman was actually proposing to a staid, middle-aged gentleman of forty-eight, an ex-Member of Parliament, a church-warden, and an ex-editor, to play at pirates with him, as though he were ten years old. I pointed out how unusual it was for an officer in the Coldstream, aged twenty-six, to think even of so puerile an amus.e.m.e.nt, but to include a dignified, earnest-minded, elderly man in the invitation was really an unprecedented outrage. My justifiable indignation increased when I found that the Guardsman actually expected me at my age to enact the role of "Carlos, the Cut-throat of the Caribbean."
Our discussion was interrupted by a violent shivering fit which seized me, accompanied by a sudden, racking headache. The swamps had done their work on the previous evening. By night-time I was in a high fever, and when we returned to Kingston next day by train, I, with a temperature up to anywhere, was hardly conscious of where I was or what I was doing.
I was put to bed at King"s House, and the fever rapidly turned to malarial gastritis. The distressing feature connected with this complaint is that it is impossible to retain any nourishment whatever.
An attack of fever is so common in hot countries that this would not be worth mentioning, except as an example of the curious way in which Nature sometimes prompts her own remedy. The doctor tried half the drugs in the pharmacopoeia on me, the fever simply laughed at them all. Nothing could have exceeded the kindness of Sir Alexander and Lady Swettenham during my illness, but as I could take no nourishment of any kind, I naturally grew very weak. The doctor urged me to cancel my pa.s.sage and await the next steamer to England, but something told me that as soon as I felt the motion of a ship under me, the persistent sickness would stop. I also felt sure that were I to remain in Jamaica another fortnight, I should remain there permanently, and gruesome memories haunted me of an undertaker"s shop in Kingston, which displayed a prominent sign, "Handsome black and gold funeral goods" (note the euphemism!) "delivered in any part of the city within two hours of telephone call." As I had no desire to make a more intimate acquaintance with the "funeral goods," however handsome, I insisted on being carried down to the mail-steamer, and was put to bed in the liner. It was blowing very fresh, and we heard that there was a heavy sea outside. As long as we lay alongside the jetty in the smooth waters of the harbour, the distressing symptoms persisted at their regular intervals, but no sooner had the ship cleared Port Royal and begun to lift to the very heavy sea outside, than the sickness stopped as though by magic. The _Port Kingston_, of the now defunct Imperial Direct West India Mail Line, was really a champion pitcher, for she had an immense beam for her length, and a great amount of top-hamper in the way of deck-houses. As the violent motion continued, I was able to take as much food as I wanted with impunity, and next day, the heavy seas still tossing the _Port Kingston_ about like a cork, I was up and about, perfectly well, free from fever and able, as Lady Nugent would have said, "to eat like a cormorant." I noted, however, that the motion of the ship seemed to produce on most of the pa.s.sengers an exactly opposite effect to what it did on myself.
The voyage from Jamaica, by that line, was rather a trying one, for in the interest of the cargo of bananas, the Captain steered straight for the Newfoundland Banks, so in five days the temperature dropped from 90 degrees to 40 degrees, and the unfortunate West Indian pa.s.sengers would cower and shiver in their thickest clothes over the radiators, where the steam hissed and sizzled.
Before we had been at sea two days, we heard of a most gallant act that had been done by one in our midst. The mail-boats of the Imperial Direct Line each carried from six to eight apprentices, young lads in process of training as officers in the Merchant Service. The apprentices on board the _Port Kingston_ had had a great deal of hard work whilst the ship was loading her cargo of fruit at Port Henderson previous to our voyage home, so the Captain granted them all a holiday, lent them one of the ship"s boats, provided them with luncheon and fishing lines, and sent them out for a day"s sailing and fishing in Kingston Harbour.
They sailed and caught fish, and, as the afternoon wore on, began to "rag," as boys will do. They ragged so effectually that they managed to capsize the boat, and were, all of them, thrown into the water.
Curiously enough, three of the eight apprentices were unable to swim.
The senior apprentice, a boy named Robert Clinch, seventeen years old, swam out, and brought back two of his young companions in safety to the keel of the upturned boat. Clinch was just starting to bring in the third lad, the youngest of them all, when there was a great swirl in the water, the grey outline of a shark rose to the surface, turned on his back, and dragged the little fellow down. Clinch, without one instant"s hesitation, dived under the shark and attacked him with his bare fists. It was an immensely courageous thing to do, for where there is one shark there will probably be many, and the boy knew that he ran the risk of being torn to pieces at any minute. So rigorous was his onslaught on the shark that the fish released his victim, though not before he had bitten off both the little fellow"s legs at the thigh. Clinch swam back with the mangled body of his young friend to the upturned boat, and managed to get him on to the keel, but the poor lad bled to death in a few minutes.
Young Clinch was a most modest boy. Nothing could get him to talk of his exploit, and should the subject be mentioned, he would grow very red, shuffle his feet, and turn the conversation into some other channel. The pa.s.sengers drew up an address, with which they presented him, as a mark of their appreciation of his act of heroism, but it was with great difficulty that Clinch could be induced to accept it.
The episode made such an impression on me that I wrote out an account of it, got it attested and signed by the Captain, and forwarded it to Lord Knollys, an old friend of mine, who was then Private Secretary to King Edward, asking him to bring the matter to his Majesty"s notice.
I am pleased to add that, in due course, Midshipman Robert Clinch was duly summoned to Buckingham Palace, where he received the well-earned Albert Medal for saving life, and also the Medal of the Royal Humane Society.
I should very much like to know what Robert Clinch"s subsequent career has been.
CHAPTER VI
The Spanish Main--Its real meaning--A detestable region--Tarpon and sharks--The isthmus--The story of the great pearl "La Pelegrina"--The Irishman and the Peruvian--The vagaries of the Southern Cross--The great Kingston earthquake--Point of view of small boys--Some earthquake incidents--"Flesh-coloured" stockings--Negro hysteria--A family incident, and the unfortunate Archbishop--Port Royal--A sugar estate--A scene from a boy"s book in real life--Cocoa-nuts-- Reef-fishing--Two young men of great promise.
With so firm a hold had Jamaica captured me that January 3, 1907, found me again starting for that delightful island, this time accompanied by a very favourite nephew, who, poor lad, was destined to fall in Belgium in the very early days of the war.
We purposely chose the longer route by Barbados, Trinidad, and the Spanish Main, in order to be able to visit the Panama Ca.n.a.l Works, then only in their semi-final stage.
A curious misapprehension seems to exist about that term "Spanish Main," which somehow suggests to me infinite romance; conquistadores, treasure-ships, gentlemen-adventurers, and bold buccaneers. It is merely a shortened way of writing Spanish Main_land_, and refers not to the sea, but to the land; the _terra firma_, as opposed to the Antilles; the continent, in distinction to the islands. By a natural process the term came to be applied to the sea washing the Spanish Mainland, but "main" does _not_ mean sea, and never did.
It is only in the last hundred years that poets have begun to use "main" as synonymous with sea, probably because there are so many more rhymes to the former than to the latter, and it sounds a fine dashing sort of term, but I can find no trace of a warrant for the use of the word in this sense before 1810. "Main" refers to the land, not to the water.
I can imagine no more detestable spot anywhere than this Spanish Main, in spite of the distant view of the mighty Cordilleras, around whose summits perpetual thunderstorms seem to play, and from which fierce gales swoop down on the sea. Clammy, suffocating heat, fever-dealing swamps, decaying towns, with an effete population and a huge rainfall, do not const.i.tute an attractive whole. Owing to the intense humidity, even the gales bring no refreshing coolness in their train.
It is easy to understand the importance the old Spanish conquistadores attached to the Isthmus of Panama, for all the gold brought from Peru had to be carried across it on mule-back to the Atlantic coast, before it could be shipped to Spain. Even Columbus, who did not know of the existence of the Pacific, founded a short-lived settlement at Porto Bello, or Nombre de Dios, in 1502, and Martin de Enciso established another at Darien in 1502, but the combined effects of the deadly climate and of hostile Indians exterminated the settlers. After Vasco Nunez de Balboa had discovered the Pacific on September 26, 1513, the strategic importance of the Isthmus became obvious, so Cartagena on the Caribbean, and Panama on the Pacific were founded. The ill-advised and ill-fated enterprise of the Scotsman William Patterson came much later, in 1698. The Scottish settlement of Darien, from which such marvellous results were expected, lasted barely two years. In 1700 the few survivors of the adventurers from Scotland were expelled by the Spaniards, ruined alike in health and pocket. The fever-stricken coasts of the Spanish Main needed but little defence of forts and guns, to protect them against the aggressive efforts of other European nations.
At our first calling-place after leaving England, we heard of the total destruction of Kingston, our destination, by the great earthquake of January 14, but it was too late to turn back, so on we went, past breezy Barbados, and sweltering Trinidad, to the Spanish Main. The curious little nautilus, or Portuguese man-of-war, is very common in these waters, and can be seen in quant.i.ties sailing along the surface with their crude-magenta membranes extended to the breeze.
Cartagena de Indias, a city of narrow streets, high houses and ma.s.sive ramparts, is a curious piece of seventeenth-century Spain to find transplanted to the Tropics. I imagine that all its inhabitants, by the law of the survival of the fittest, must be immune from fever, which is certainly not the case in that most unattractive spot Colon.
It may interest any prospective visitors to Colon to learn that there is excellent tarpon fishing in Colon Harbour itself. My nephew, having provided himself with a tarpon rod, hooked a splendid fish from the deck of the mail-steamer, the bait being a "cavalle," a local white fish of some 3 lbs. My nephew played the tarpon for nearly two hours; the fish fought splendidly, shooting continuously into the air, a curved glittering bar of silver, 180 lbs. of giant gleaming herring, when the line (a stout piano wire) suddenly snapped as he was being reeled in. A tarpon fisherman has a leathern "bucket" strapped in front of him, in which to rest the b.u.t.t of his rod, otherwise the strain would be too great. Whilst my nephew was playing his tarpon, I was fortunate enough to hook a large shark, and there was little fear of my line parting, for it was a light chain of solid steel. I was surprised that the brute showed so little fight, he let me tow him about where I liked. We fixed a running noose to the wire rope of a derrick, and after a few attempts succeeded in dropping it over the shark"s head, and in tautening it behind his fins; the steam-derrick did the rest. I could see distinctly six or seven pilot-fish playing round the shark. They were of about a pound weight, and were marked exactly like our fresh-water perch, except that their stripes were bright blue on a golden ground. As the shark is rather stupid, and has but poor eyesight, the function of the pilot-fish is to ascertain where food is to be found, and then to show their master the way to it, after which, like the sycophants they are, they live on the crumbs that fall from his mouth. The pilot-fish only deserted their master when the derrick hauled him out of the water, and at the same time some dozen remoras, or sucking-fish, looking like disgusted bloated leeches, let go their hold on the shark and dropped back into the sea.
No human being would voluntarily pay a second visit to Colon, a dirty, mean collection of shanties, with inhabitants worthy of it. The princ.i.p.al article of commerce seemed to be black-calico "funeral suits," a sartorial novelty to me.