178
THE
ENGLISH
IN
THE
WEST
INDIES
Not one person whom I met and who could speak from per sonal knowledge had any other story to tell. We looked again into St. Lucia on our way. The train ing squadron was lying outside, and the harbour was covered with boats full of blue-jackets. The big ships were rolling heavily. They could have eaten up Rodney's fleet. The great ‘ Ville de Paris ’ would have been a mouthful to the smallest of them. Man for man, officers and crew were as good as Rodney ever commanded. Yet, somehow, they produce small effect on the imagination of the colonists. The impression is that they are meant more for show than for serious use. Alas! the stars and stripes on a Yankee trader have more to say in the West Indies than the white ensigns of a fleet of British ironclads. At Barbadoes there was nothing more for me to do or see. The English mail was on the point of sailing, and I hastened on board. One does not realise distance on maps. Jamaica belongs to the West Indies, and the West Indies are a col lective entity. Yet it is removed from the Antilles by the diameter of the Caribbean Sea, and is farther off than Gibraltar from Southampton. Thus it was a voyage of several days, and I looked about to see who were to be my companions. There were several Spaniards, one or two English tourists, and some ladies who never left their cabins. The captain was the most remarkable figure: an elderly man with one eye lost or injured, the other as peremptory as I have often seen in a human face ; rough and prickly on the outside as a pineapple, internally very much resembling the same fruit, for at the bottom he was true, genuine, and kindly hearted, very amusing, and inti mately known to all travellers on the West Indian line, in the service of which he had passed forty years of his life. In his own ship he was sovereign and recognised no superior. Bishops, colonial governors, presidents of South American republics were, so far as their office went, no more to him