JACMEL
185
pensities. Two steamers were lying inside, one of which, belonging to an English company, had ‘ happened a mis fortune,’ and was breaking up as a -deserted wreck. A Yankee clipper schooner had just come in with salt fish and crackers — a singularly beautiful vessel, with immense beam, which would have startled the builders of the Cowes racers. It was precisely like the schooner which Tom Cringle commanded before the dockyard martinets had improved her into ugliness, built on the lines of the old pirate craft of the islands, when the lives and fortunes of men hung on the extra speed, or the point which they could lie closer to the wind. Her return cargo would be coffee and bananas. Englishmen move about in Jacmel as if they were ashamed of themselves among their dusky lords and masters. I observed the Yankee skipper paddling him self off in a canoe with his broad straw hat and his cigar in his mouth, looking as if all the world belonged to him, and as if all the world, and the Hayti blacks in particular, were aware of the fact. The Yankee, whether we like it or not, is the acknowledged sovereign in these waters. The landing place was, or had been, a jetty built on piles and boarded over. Half the piles were broken ; the planks had rotted and fallen through. The swell was rolling home, and we had to step out quickly as the boat rose on the crest of the wave. A tattered crowd of negroes were loafing about variously dressed, none, however, en tirely without clothes of some kind. One of them did kindly give me a hand, observing that I was less light of foot than once I might have been. The agent's office was close by. I asked the head clerk— a Frenchman — to find me a guide through the town. He called one of the bystanders whom he knew, and we started together, I and my black com panion, to see as much as I could in the hour which