Part 23

All at once the peak vibrates to a tremendous sound from somewhere below.... It is only a peal of thunder; but it startled at first, because the mountain rumbles and grumbles occasionally.... From the wilderness of ferns about the lake a sweet long low whistle comes--three times;--a _siffleur-de-montagne_ has its nest there.

There is a rain-storm over the woods beneath us: clouds now hide everything but the point on which we rest; the crater of the Palmistes becomes invisible. But it is only for a little while that we are thus befogged: a wind conies, blows the clouds over us, lifts them up and folds them like a drapery, and slowly whirls them away northward. And for the first time the view is clear over the intervening gorge,--now spanned by the rocket-leap of a perfect rainbow.

... Valleys and mornes, peaks and ravines,--succeeding each other swiftly as surge succeeds surge in a storm,--a weirdly tossed world, but beautiful as it is weird: all green the foreground, with all tints of green, shadowing off to billowy distances of purest blue. The sea-line remains invisible as ever: you know where it is only by the zone of pale light ringing the double sphericity of sky and ocean. And in this double blue void the island seems to hang suspended: far peaks seem to come up from nowhere, to rest on nothing--like forms of mirage. Useless to attempt photography;--distances take the same color as the sea. Vauclin's truncated mass is recognizable only by the shape of its indigo shadows. All is vague, vertiginous;--the land still seems to quiver with the prodigious forces that upheaved it.

High over all this billowing and peaking tower the Pitons of Carbet, gem-violet through the vapored miles,--the tallest one filleted with a single soft white band of cloud. Through all the wonderful chain of the Antilles you might seek in vain for other peaks exquisite of form as these. Their beauty no less surprises the traveller to-day than it did Columbus three hundred and eighty-six years ago, when--on the thirteenth day of June, 1502--his caravel first sailed into sight of them, and he asked his Indian guide the name of the unknown land, and the names of those marvellous shapes. Then, according to Pedro Martyr de Anghiera, the Indian answered that the name of the island was Madiana; that those peaks had been venerated from immemorial time by the ancient peoples of the archipelago as the birthplace of the human race; and that the first brown habitants of Madiana, having been driven from their natural heritage by the man-eating pirates of the south--the cannibal Caribs,--remembered and mourned for their sacred mountains, and gave the names of them, for a memory, to the loftiest summits of their new home,--Hayti.... Surely never was fairer spot hallowed by the legend of man's nursing-place than the valley blue-shadowed by those peaks,--worthy, for their gracious femininity of shape, to seem the visible breasts of the All-nourishing Mother,--dreaming under this tropic sun.

Touching the zone of pale light north-east, appears a beautiful peaked silhouette,--Dominica. We had hoped to perceive Saint Lucia; but the atmosphere is too heavily charged with vapor to-day. How magnificent must be the view on certain extraordinary days, when it reaches from Antigua to the Grenadines--over a range of three hundred miles! But the atmospheric conditions which allow of such a spectacle are rare indeed. As a general rule, even in the most unclouded West Indian weather, the loftiest peaks fade into the light at a distance of one hundred miles.

A sharp ridge covered with fern cuts off the view of the northern slopes: one must climb it to look down upon Macouba. Macouba occupies the steepest slope of Pelée, and the grimmest part of the coast: its little _chef-lieu_ is industrially famous for the manufacture of native tobacco, and historically for the ministrations of Père Labat, who rebuilt its church. Little change has taken place in the parish since his time. "Do you know Macouba?" asks a native writer;--"it is not Pelion upon Ossa, but ten or twelve Pelions side by side with ten or twelve Ossæ, interseparated by prodigious ravines. Men can speak to each other from places whence, by rapid walking, it would require hours to meet;--to travel there is to experience on dry land the sensation of the sea."

With the diminution of the warmth provoked by the exertion of climbing, you begin to notice how cool it feels;--you could almost doubt the testimony of your latitude. Directly east is Senegambia: we are well south of Timbuctoo and the Sahara,--on a line with southern India. The ocean has cooled the winds; at this altitude the rarity of the air is northern; but in the valleys below the vegetation is African. The best alimentary plants, the best forage, the flowers of the gardens, are of Guinea;--the graceful date-palms are from the Atlas region: those tamarinds, whose thick shade stifles all other vegetal life beneath it, are from Senegal. Only, in the touch of the air, the vapory colors of distance, the shapes of the hills, there is a something not of Africa: that strange fascination which has given to the island its poetic creole name,--_le Pays des Revenants._ And the charm is as puissant in our own day as it was more than two hundred years ago, when Père Du Tertre wrote:--"I have never met one single man, nor one single woman, of all those who came back therefrom, in whom I have not remarked a most passionate desire to return thereunto."

Time and familiarity do not weaken the charm, either for those born among these scenes who never voyaged beyond their native island, or for those to whom the streets of Paris and the streets of St. Pierre are equally well known. Even at a time when Martinique had been forsaken by hundreds of her ruined planters, and the paradise-life of the old days had become only a memory to embitter exile,--a Creole writes:--

--"Let there suddenly open before you one of those vistas, or anses, with colonnades of cocoa-palm--at the end of which you see smoking the chimney of a sugar-mill, and catch a glimpse of the hamlet of negro cabins (_cases_);--or merely picture to yourself one of the most ordinary, most trivial scenes: nets being hauled by two ranks of fishermen; a canot waiting for the embellie to make a dash for the beach; even a negro bending under the weight of a basket of fruits, and running along the shore to get to market;--and illuminate that with the light of our sun! What landscapes!--O Salvator Rosa! O Claude Lorrain,--if I had your pencil!... Well do I remember the day on which, after twenty years of absence, I found myself again in presence of these wonders;--I feel once more the thrill of delight that made all my body tremble, the tears that came to my eyes. It was my land, my own land, that appeared so beautiful."...[36]

[Footnote 36: Dr. E. Rufz: "Études historiques," vol. I, p. 180.]

X

At the beginning, while gazing south, east, west, to the rim of the world, all laughed, shouted, interchanged the quick delight of new impressions: every face was radiant.... Now all look serious;--none speak. The first physical joy of finding oneself on this point in violet air, exalted above the hills, soon yields to other emotions inspired by the mighty vision and the colossal peace of the heights. Dominating all, I think, is the consciousness of the awful antiquity of what one is looking upon,--such a sensation, perhaps, as of old found utterance in that tremendous question of the Book of Job:--"_Wast thou brought forth before the hills?_"

... And the blue multitude of the peaks, the perpetual congregation of the mornes, seem to chorus in the vast resplendence,--telling of Nature's eternal youth, and the passionless permanence of that about us and beyond us and beneath,--until something like the fulness of a great grief begins to weigh at the heart.... For all this astonishment of beauty, all this majesty of light and form and color, will surely endure,--marvellous as now,--after we shall have lain down to sleep where no dreams come, and may never arise from the dust of our rest to look upon it.

'TI CANOTIÉ

I

One might almost say that commercial time in St. Pierre is measured by cannon-shots,--by the signal-guns of steamers. Every such report announces an event of extreme importance to the whole population. To the merchant it is a notification that mails, money, and goods have arrived;--to consuls and Government officials it gives notice of fees and dues to be collected;--for the host of lightermen, longshoremen, port laborers of all classes, it promises work and pay;--for all it signifies the arrival of food. The island does not feed itself: cattle, salt meats, hams, lard, flour, cheese, dried fish, all come from abroad,--particularly from America. And in the minds of the colored population the American steamer is so intimately associated with the idea of those great tin cans in which food-stuffs are brought from the United States, that the onomatope applied to the can, because of the sound outgiven by it when tapped,--_bom!_--is also applied to the ship itself. The English or French or Belgian steamer, however large, is only known as _packett-à, batiment-là_; but the American steamer is always the "bom-ship"--_batiment-bom-à_; or, the "food-ship"--_batiment-mangé-à._ ... You hear women and men asking each other, as the shock of the gun flaps through all the town, "_Mil godé ça qui là, chè?_" And if the answer be, "_Mais c'est bom-là, chè,--bom-mangé-à ka rivé_" (Why, it is the bom, dear,--the food-bom that has come), great is the exultation.

Again, because of the sound of her whistle, we find a steamer called in this same picturesque idiom, _batiment-cône_,--"the horn-ship." There is even a song, of which the refrain is:--

"Bom-là rivé, chè,-- Batiment-cône-là rivé."

... But of all the various classes of citizens, those most joyously excited by the coming of a great steamer, whether she be a "bom" or not,--are the '_ti canotié_, who swarm out immediately in little canoes of their own manufacture to dive for coins which passengers gladly throw into the water for the pleasure of witnessing the graceful spectacle. No sooner does a steamer drop anchor--unless the water be very rough indeed--than she is surrounded by a fleet of the funniest little boats imaginable, full of naked urchins screaming creole.

These _'ti canotié_--these little canoe-boys and professional divers--are, for the most part, sons of boatmen of color, the real canotiers. I cannot find who first invented the '_ti canot_: the shape and dimensions of the little canoe are fixed according to a tradition several generations old; and no improvements upon the original model seem to have ever been attempted, with the sole exception of a tiny water-tight box contrived sometimes at one end, in which the _palettes_, or miniature paddles, and various other trifles may be stowed away. The actual cost of material for a canoe of this kind seldom exceeds twenty-five or thirty cents; and, nevertheless, the number of canoes is not very large--I doubt if there be more than fifteen in the harbor;--as the families of Martinique boatmen are all so poor that twenty-five sous are difficult to spare, in spite of the certainty that the little son can earn fifty times the amount within a month after owning a canoe.

For the manufacture of a canoe an American lard-box or kerosene-oil box is preferred by reason of its shape; but any well-constructed shipping-case of small size would serve the purpose. The top is removed; the sides and the corners of the bottom are sawn out at certain angles; and the pieces removed are utilized for the sides of the bow and stern,--sometimes also in making the little box for the paddles, or palettes, which are simply thin pieces of tough wood about the form and size of a cigar-box lid. Then the little boat is tarred and varnished: it cannot sink,--though it is quite easily upset. There are no seats. The boys (there are usually two to each canot) simply squat down in the bottom,--facing each other. They can paddle with surprising swiftness over a smooth sea; and it is a very pretty sight to witness one of their prize contests in racing,--which take place every 14th of July....

II

... It was five o'clock in the afternoon: the horizon beyond the harbor was turning lemon-color;--and a thin warm wind began to come in weak puffs from the south-west,--the first breaths to break the immobility of the tropical air. Sails of vessels becalmed at the entrance of the bay commenced to flap lazily: they might belly after sundown.

The _La Guayra_ was in port, lying well out: her mountainous iron mass rising high above the modest sailing craft moored in her vicinity,--barks and brigantines and brigs and schooners and barkentines. She had lain before the town the whole afternoon, surrounded by the entire squadron of canots; and the boys were still circling about her flanks, although she had got up steam and was lifting her anchor. They had been very lucky, indeed, that afternoon,--all the little canotiers;--and even many yellow lads, not fortunate enough to own canoes, had swum out to her in hope of sharing the silver shower falling from her saloon-deck. Some of these, tired out, were resting themselves by sitting on the slanting cables of neighboring ships. Perched naked thus,--balancing in the sun, against the blue of sky or water, their slender bodies took such orange from the mellowing light as to seem made of some self-luminous substance,--flesh of sea-fairies....

Suddenly the _La Guayra_ opened her steam-throat and uttered such a moo that all the mornes cried out for at least a minute after;--and the little fellows perched on the cables of the sailing craft tumbled into the sea at the sound and struck out for shore. Then the water all at once burst backward in immense frothing swirls from beneath the stem of the steamer; and there arose such a heaving as made all the little canoes dance. The _La Guayra_ was moving. She moved slowly at first, making a great fuss as she turned round: then she began to settle down to her journey very majestically,--just making the water pitch a little behind her, as the hem of a woman's robe tosses lightly at her heels while she walks.

And, contrary to custom, some of the canoes followed after her. A dark handsome man, wearing an immense Panama hat, and jewelled rings upon his hands, was still throwing money; and still the boys dived for it. But only one of each crew now plunged; for, though the _La Guayra_ was yet moving slowly, it was a severe strain to follow her, and there was no time to be lost.

The captain of the little band--black Maximilien, ten years old, and his comrade Stéphane--nicknamed _Ti Chabin_, because of his bright hair,--a slim little yellow boy of eleven--led the pursuit, crying always, "_Encò, Missié,--encò!_"...

The _La Guayra_ had gained fully two hundred yards when the handsome passenger made his final largess,--proving himself quite an expert in flinging coin. The piece fell far short of the boys, but near enough to distinctly betray a yellow shimmer as it twirled to the water. That was gold!

In another minute the leading canoe had reached the spot, the other canotiers voluntarily abandoning the quest,--for it was little use to contend against Maximilien and Stéphane, who had won all the canoe contests last 14th of July. Stéphane, who was the better diver, plunged.

He was much longer below than usual, came up at quite a distance, panted as he regained the canoe, and rested his arms upon it. The water was so deep there, he could not reach the coin the first time, though he could see it: he was going to try again,--it was gold, sure enough.

--"_Fouinq! ça fond içitt!_" he gasped.

Maximilien felt all at once uneasy. Very deep water, and perhaps sharks. And sunset not far off! The _La Guayra_ was diminishing in the offing.

--"_Boug-là 'lé fai nou néyé!--laissé y, Stéphane!_" he cried. (The fellow wants to drown us. _Laissé_--leave it alone.)

But Stéphane had recovered breath, and was evidently resolved to try again. It was gold!

--"_Mais ça c'est lò!_"

--"_Assez, non!_" screamed Maximilien. "_Pa plongé ncò, moin ka di ou! Ah! foute!_"...

Stéphane had dived again!

... And where were the others? "_Bon-Dié, gadé oti yo yé!_" They were almost out of sight,--tiny specks moving shoreward.... The _La Guayra_ now seemed no bigger than the little packet running between St. Pierre and Fort-de-France.

Up came Stéphane again, at a still greater distance than before,--holding high the yellow coin in one hand. He made for the canoe, and Maximilien paddled towards him and helped him in. Blood was streaming from the little diver's nostrils, and blood colored the water he spat from his mouth.

--"_Ah! moin té ka di ou laissé y!_" cried Maximilien, in anger and alarm.... "_Gàdé, godé sang-à ka coulé nans nez ou,--nans bouche ou!... Mi oti lézautt!_"

_Lézautt_, the rest, were no longer visible.

--"_Et mi oti nou yé!_" cried Maximilien again. They had never ventured so far from shore.

But Stéphane answered only, "_C'est lò!_" For the first time in his life he held a piece of gold in his fingers. He tied it up in a little rag attached to the string fastened about his waist,--a purse of his own invention,--and took up his paddles, coughing the while and spitting crimson.

--"_Mi! mi!--mi oti nou yé!_" reiterated Maximilien. "_Bon-Dié!_ look where we are!"

The Place had become indistinct;--the light-house, directly behind half an hour earlier, now lay well south: the red light had just been kindled. Seaward, in advance of the sinking orange disk of the sun, was the _La Guayra_, passing to the horizon. There was no sound from the shore: about them a great silence had gathered,--the Silence of seas, which is a fear. Panic seized them: they began to paddle furiously.

But St. Pierre did not appear to draw any nearer. Was it only an effect of the dying light, or were they actually moving towards the semicircular cliffs of Fond-Corré?... Maximilien began to cry. The little chabin paddled on,--though the blood was still trickling over his breast.

Maximilien screamed out to him:--

--"_Ou pa ka pagayé,--anh?--ou ni bousoin demi?_?" (Thou dost not paddle, eh?--thou wouldst go to sleep?)

--"_Si! moin ka pagayé,--epi fò!_" (I am paddling, and hard, too!) responded Stéphane....

--"_Ou ka pagayé!--ou ka menti!_" (Thou art paddling!--thou liest!) vociferated Maximilien.... "And the fault is all thine. I cannot, all by myself, make the canoe to go in water like this! The fault is all thine: I told thee not to dive, thou stupid!"

--"_Ou fou!_" cried Stéphane, becoming angry. "_Moin ka pagayé!_" (I am paddling.)

--"Beast! never may we get home so! Paddle, thou lazy;--paddle, thou nasty!"

--"_Macaque_ thou!--monkey!"

--"_Chabin!_--must be chabin, for to be stupid so!"

--"Thou black monkey!--thou species of _ouistiti!_"

--"Thou tortoise-of-the-land!--thou slothful more than _molocoye!_"

--"Why, thou cursed monkey, if thou sayest I do not paddle, thou dost not know how to paddle!"...

... But Maximilien's whole expression changed: he suddenly stopped paddling, and stared before him and behind him at a great violet band broadening across the sea northward out of sight; and his eyes were big with terror as he cried out:--

--"_Mais ni qui chose qui douôle içitt!_... There is something queer, Stéphane; there is something queer."...

--"Ah! you begin to see now, Maximilien!--it is the current!"

--"A devil-current, Stéphane.... We are drifting: we will go to the horizon!"...

To the horizon--"_nou kallé Ihorizon!_"--a phrase of terrible picturesqueness.... In the creole tongue, "to the horizon" signifies to the Great Open--into the measureless sea.

--"_C'est pa lapeine pagayé atouèlement!_" (It is no use to paddle now), sobbed Maximilien, laying down his palettes.

--"_Si! si!_" said Stéphane, reversing the motion: "paddle with the current."

--"With the current! It runs to La Dominique!"

--"_Pouloss_," phlegmatically returned Stéphane,--"_ennou!_--let us make for La Dominique!"

--"Thou fool!--it is more than past forty kilometres.... _Stéphane, mi! gadé!--mi qui gouôs requ'em!_"

A long black fin cut the water almost beside them, passed, and vanished,--a requin indeed! But, in his patois, the boy almost re-echoed the name as uttered by quaint Père Du Tertre, who, writing of strange fishes more than two hundred years ago, says it is called REQUIEM, because for the man who findeth himself alone with it in the midst of the sea, surely a requiem must be sung.

--"Do not paddle, Stéphane!--do not put thy hand in the water again!"

III

... The _La Guayra_ was a point on the sky-verge;--the sun's face had vanished. The silence and the darkness were deepening together.

--"_Si lanmè ka vini plis fò, ça nou ké fai?_" (If the sea roughens, what are we to do?) asked Maximilien.

--"Maybe we will meet a steamer," answered Stéphane: "the _Orinoco_ was due to-day."

--"And if she pass in the night?"

--"They can see us."...

--"No, they will not be able to see us at all. There is no moon."

--"They have lights ahead."

--"I tell thee, they will not see us at all,--_pièss! pièss!_"

--"Then they will hear us cry out."

--"No,--we cannot cry so loud. One can hear nothing but a steam-whistle or a cannon, with the noise of the wind and the water and the machine.... Even on the Fort-de-France packet one cannot hear for the machine. And the machine of the _Orinoco_ is more big than the church of the 'Centre.'"

--"Then we must try to get to La Dominique."

... They could now feel the sweep of the mighty current;--it even seemed to them that they could hear it,--a deep low whispering. At long intervals they saw lights,--the lights of houses in Pointe-Prince, in Fond-Canonville,--in Au Prêcheur. Under them the depth was unfathomed:--hydrographic charts mark it _sans-fond._ And they passed the great cliffs of Aux Abymes, under which lies the Village of the Abysms.

The red glare in the west disappeared suddenly as if blown out;--the rim of the sea vanished into the void of the gloom;--the night narrowed about them, thickening like a black fog. And the invisible, irresistible power of the sea was now bearing them away from the tall coast,--over profundities unknown,--over the _sans-fond_,--out "to the horizon."

IV

... Behind the canoe a long thread of pale light quivered and twisted: bright points from time to time mounted up, glowered like eyes, and vanished again;--glimmerings of faint flame wormed away on either side as they floated on. And the little craft no longer rocked as before;--they felt another and a larger motion,--long slow ascents and descents enduring for minutes at a time;--they were riding the great swells,--_riding the horizon!_

Twice they were capsized. But happily the heaving was a smooth one, and their little canoe could not sink: they groped for it, found it, righted it, and climbed in, and baled out the water with their hands.

From time to time they both cried out together, as loud as they could,--"_Sucou!--sucou!--sucou!_"--hoping that some one might be looking for them.... The alarm had indeed been given; and one of the little steam-packets had been sent out to look for them,--with torch-fires blazing at her bows; but she had taken the wrong direction.

--"Maximilien," said Stéphane, while the great heaving seemed to grow vaster,--"_fau nou ka prié Bon-Dié._"...

Maximilien answered nothing.

--"_Fau prié Bon-Dié_" (We must pray to the Bon-Dié), repeated Stéphane.

--"_Pa lapeine, li pas pè ouè nou atò!_" (It is not worth while: He cannot see us now) answered the little black.

... In the immense darkness even the loom of the island was no longer visible.