LITMIR.BIZ

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crowds.  And still the darkness continued, and the dust fell.

      I have a letter, written by one long since dead, who had at least powers of description of no common order, telling how, when he tried to go out of his house upon the east coast, he could not find the trees on his own lawn, save by feeling for their stems.  He stood amazed not only in utter darkness, but in utter silence.  For the trade-wind had fallen dead; the everlasting roar of the surf was gone; and the only noise was the crashing of branches, snapped by the weight of the clammy dust.  He went in again, and waited.  About one o’clock the veil began to lift; a lurid sunlight stared in from the horizon: but all was black overhead.  Gradually the dust-cloud drifted away; the island saw the sun once more; and saw itself inches deep in black, and in this case fertilising, dust.  The trade-wind blew suddenly once more out of the clear east, and the surf roared again along the shore.

      Meanwhile, a heavy earthquake-wave had struck part at least of the shores of Barbadoes.  The gentleman on the east coast, going out, found traces of the sea, and boats and logs washed up, some 10 to 20 feet above high-tide mark: a convulsion which seems to have gone unmarked during the general dismay.

      One man at least, an old friend of John Hunter, Sir Joseph Banks and others their compeers, was above the dismay, and the superstitious panic which accompanied it.  Finding it still dark when he rose to dress, he opened (so the story used to run) his window; found it stick, and felt upon the sill a coat of soft powder.  ‘The volcano in St. Vincent has broken out at last,’ said the wise man, ‘and this is the dust of it.’  So he quieted his household and his Negroes, lighted his candles, and went to his scientific books, in that delight, mingled with an awe not the less deep because it is rational and self-possessed, with which he, like other men of science, looked at the wonders of this wondrous world.

      Those who will recollect that Barbadoes is eighty miles to windward of St. Vincent, and that a strong breeze from E.N.E. is usually blowing from the former island to the latter, will be able to imagine, not to measure, the force of an explosion which must have blown this dust several miles into the air, above the region of the trade-wind, whether into a totally calm stratum, or into that still higher one in which the heated south-west wind is hurrying continually from the tropics toward the pole.  As for the cessation of the trade-wind itself during the fall of the dust, I leave the fact to be explained by more learned men: the authority whom I have quoted leaves no doubt in my mind as to the fact.

      On leaving St. Vincent, the track lies past the Grenadines.  For sixty miles, long low islands of quaint forms and euphonious names—Becquia, Mustique, Canonau, Carriacou, Isle de Rhone—rise a few hundred feet out of the unfathomable sea, bare of wood, edged with cliffs and streaks of red and gray rock, resembling, says Dr. Davy, the Cyclades of the Grecian Archipelago: their number is counted at three hundred.  The largest of them all is not 8000 acres in extent; the smallest about 600.  A quiet prosperous race of little yeomen, beside a few planters, dwell there; the latter feeding and exporting much stock, the former much provisions, and both troubling themselves less than of yore with sugar and cotton.  They build coasting vessels, and trade with them to the larger islands; and they might be, it is said, if they chose, much richer than they are,—if that be any good to them.

      The steamer does not stop at any of these little sea-hermitages; so that we could only watch their shores: and they were worth watching.  They had been, plainly, sea-gnawn for countless ages; and may, at some remote time, have been all joined in one long ragged chine of hills, the highest about 1000 feet.  They seem to be for the most part made up of marls and limestones, with trap-dykes and other igneous matters here and there.  And one could not help entertaining the fancy that they were a specimen of what the other islands were once, or at least would have been now, had not each of them had its volcanic vents, to pile up hard lavas thousands of feet aloft, above the marine strata, and so consolidate each ragged chine of submerged mountain into one solid conical island, like St. Vincent at their northern end, and at their southern end that beautiful Grenada to which we were fast approaching, and which we reached, on our outward voyage, at nightfall; running in toward a narrow gap of moonlit cliffs, beyond which we could discern the lights of a town.  We did not enter the harbour: but lay close off its gateway in safe deep water; fired our gun, and waited for the swarm of negro boats, which began to splash out to us through the darkness, the jabbering of their crews heard long before the flash of their oars was seen.

      Most weird and fantastic are these nightly visits to West Indian harbours.  Above, the black mountain-depths, with their canopy of cloud, bright white against the purple night, hung with keen stars.  The moon, it may be on her back in the west, sinking like a golden goblet behind some rock-fort, half shrouded in black trees.  Below, a line of bright mist over a swamp, with the coco-palms standing up through it, dark, and yet glistering in the moon.  A light here and there in a house: another here and there in a vessel, unseen in the dark.  The echo of the gun from hill to hill.  Wild voices from shore and sea.  The snorting of the steamer, the rattling of the chain through the hawse-hole; and on deck, and under the quarter, strange gleams of red light amid pitchy darkness, from engines, galley fires, lanthorns; and black folk and white folk flitting restlessly across them.

      The strangest show: ‘like a thing in a play,’ says every one when they see it for the first time.  And when at the gun-fire one tumbles out of one’s berth, and up on deck, to see the new island, one has need to rub one’s eyes, and pinch oneself—as I was minded to do again and again during the next few weeks—to make sure that it is not all a dream.  It is always worth the trouble, meanwhile, to tumble up on deck, not merely for the show, but for the episodes of West Indian life and manners, which, quaint enough by day, are sure to be even more quaint at night, in the confusion and bustle of the darkness.  One such I witnessed in that same harbour of Grenada, not easily to be forgotten.

      A tall and very handsome middle-aged brown woman, in a limp print gown and a gorgeous turban, stood at the gangway in a glare of light, which made her look like some splendid witch by a Walpurgis night-fire.  ‘Tell your boatman to go round to the other side,’ quoth the officer in charge.

      ‘Fanqua!  (François)  You go round oder side of de ship!’

      Fanqua, who seemed to be her son, being sleepy, tipsy, stupid, or lazy, did not stir.

      ‘Fanqua!  You hear what de officer say?  You go round.’

      No move.

      ‘Fanqua!  You not ashamed of youself?  You not hear de officer say he turn a steam-pipe over you?’

      No move.

      ‘Fanqua!’ (authoritative).

      ‘Fanqua!’ (indignant).

      ‘Fanqua!’ (argumentative).

      ‘Fanqua!’ (astonished).

      ‘Fanqua!’ (majestic).

      ‘Fanqua!’ (confidentially alluring).

      ‘Fanqua!’ (regretful).  And so on, through every conceivable tone of expression.

      But Fanqua did not move; and the officer and bystanders laughed.

      She summoned all her talents, and uttered one last ‘Fanqua!’ which was a triumph of art.

      Shame and surprise were blended in her voice with tenderness and pity, and they again with meek despair.  To have been betrayed, disgraced, and so unexpectedly, by one whom she loved, and must love still, in spite of this, his fearful fall!

      It was more than heart could bear.  Breathing his name but that once more, she stood a moment, like a queen of tragedy, one long arm drawing her garments round her, the other outstretched, as if to cast off—had she the heart to do it—the rebel; and then stalked away into the darkness of the paddle-boxes—for ever and a day to brood speechless over her great sorrow?  Not in the least.  To begin chattering away to her acquaintances, as if no Fanqua existed in the world.

      It was a piece of admirable play-acting; and was meant to be.  She had been conscious all the while that she was an object of attention—possibly of admiration—to a group of men; and she knew what was right to be done and said under the circumstances, and did it perfectly, even to the smallest change of voice.  She was doubtless quite sincere the whole time, and

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