398
Martinique
Sketches.
Softly and very swiftly night rose like an indigo exhalation from the land,— filling the valleys, flooding the gorges, blackening the woods, leaving only the points of the peaks a while to catch the crimson glow. Forests and fields began to utter a rushing sound as of torrents, always deepening,—made up of the instrumentation and the voices of numberless little beings : clangings as of hammered iron, ringings as of dropping silver upon a stone, the dry bleatings of the cabritt-bois, and the chirruping of tree-frogs, and the ki-i-i-i-i-i-i of crickets. Immense trembling sparks began to rise and fall among the shadows,—twinkling out and disappearing all mysteriously: these were the fire-flies awakening. Then about the branches of the bois-canon black shapes began to hover, which were not birds—shapes flitting processionally without any noise; each one in turn resting a moment as to nibble something at the end of a bough ;— then yielding place to another, and circling away, to return again from the other side . . . the guimbos, the great bats. But we were silent, with the emotion of sunset still upon us : that ghostly emotion which is the transmitted experience of a race,—the sum of ancestral experiences innumerable, — the mingled joy and pain of a million years. . . . Suddenly a sweet voice pierced the stillness,—pleading :— —"Pa combiné, chè!—pa combiné conm ça!" ( D o not think, dear !—do not think like that !) . . . Only less beautiful than the sunset she seemed, this slender half-breed, who had come all unperceived behind us, treading soundlessly with her ^slim bare feet. . . . " And you, Missié," she said to me, in a tone of gentle reproach ; — " you are his friend ! why do you let him think? It is thinking that will prevent him getting well." Combiné in creole signifies to think intently, and there-