DAN’S LETTER
“MY OWN, DEAR PRETTY-EYED WIFE,--Here I be so safe as you could wish,
with many a mile o’ salt water betwixt me and them as would harm me. A
mighty lot of terrible strange things I’ve seed; but first I must say
as I got to Plymouth all right and met a chap as wanted a sailor-man.
He took me, because he couldn’t get a better, and we sailed out of
Plymouth on the very next tide. My ship be called the _Peabody_. She’s
a steamer--not much to look at and a poor one to go; but here we are
anyway, and I be writing to you from Tobago--an island in the West
Indies, where us get brown sugar and cocoanuts and such like foreign
contrivances.
“I’ll begin at the beginning, well knowing how you like for things to be
all in order and ship-shape as we say. Well, the food’s cruel bad and the
ship’s under-manned and under-engined, but we’m just on the windy side
of the law, I believe, which is all you can expect from a tramp like the
_Peabody_. The old man (Skipper) is a very good sort and everybody likes
him; also the mate; likewise the bosun. Everything’s all right, in fact,
except the grub and the engines. I be the carpenter’s mate.
“Us seed a good few wonders coming out over, but it blowed a bit off the
Azores (which you can find in father’s big map of the world), and we took
it green. By which I mean this vessel shipped solid waves over her bows
and we had to slow down, else we’d have gone down. The engines be good
for nought in a head wind. But we got to Barbados at last, and I find
’tis called Bim for shortness. In the dimpsy light us fetched it, but out
here twilight turns to night while the clock’s striking, and afore we
cast anchor ’twas dark and the island lying like a sea monster with a red
light on his nose and a white on his tail--lighthouses I mean. Bridgetown
it was where us landed part of our cargo--a place with windmills ’pon it
and tilled land and miles of stuff, as made me think of home, so green
it was; but ’tis sugar-cane when you gets up to it. We didn’t bide in
Carlisle Bay long, else I’d have wrote from there, but we was so terrible
busy I hadn’t but one chance to land. The folks here be every colour you
could name between white and black, through all manner of shades of snuff
colour, and butter colour, and putty colour, and peat colour. Cheerful,
lazy devils, as like to laugh and smoke and chew sugar-cane all day. But
they properly hate work. Reckless mongrels, I should say they was; but in
Bim a man don’t have any show unless he’ve got a touch of the tar-brush
as they say. That means nigger blood. Such a way as they tell! I never
heard English spoke so comic in all my born days. Their clothes be built
for ventilation mostly, and I never seed such a show of rags. Barbados
is made of coral, but t’other islands are volcanoes, and they’ve a nasty
way of going off when you least count upon it. From Carlisle Bay you can
see white houses under wooden tiles all scorched grey by the sun heat,
and in the streets a great crowd goes up and down in the blazing air and
shining dust. Such a noise and clatter I never did hear. Mules squealing,
bells ringing, bands playing, niggers bawling. The women all wear white
dresses and gay turbans. They’m amazing straight in the back, owing to
carrying all their goods ’pon top their heads. They sell cocoanuts,
cane, pineapples, oranges, limes, mangoes, yams, pickles, and Lord knows
what beside. They stride out beautiful owing to their short petticoats,
but their mouths be a caution. The children look like little chocolate
dolls, and much you’d love ’em. The policemen all be dressed in white.
They fancy themselves an awful lot. The pigs run about the streets and
be for all the world like greyhounds (what we call long-dogs to home).
The climate’s that fiery that you’ll never get no stock properly fatted
in it. But you don’t feel no call for much red meat. We got fresh water
and green stuff aboard here, and how I wish I could have sent you my
dinner yesterday. I had flying-fish and sweet potatoes and green-skinned
oranges, red as gold inside, and many other fine things as would make
your little mouth water to hear tell about. But the mangoes is what I
like best, though they do say out here they be no better than a bit of
tow dipped in turps. Ban’t true, I assure ’e. I got off for two hour just
afore we set sail, and went into the country, trapsing round to see what
I could see. And if I didn’t come across a great mango tree as ’peared
to me to be just a foreign, wild tree alongside the high road. Well,
I seed the fruit in it, an’ thinks I, ‘’twill be a fine thing for the
ship.’ So up I goes, hand over fist, but not before I made some niggers
stop throwing stones up at the tree. Well, I shinned up aloft and began
flinging down the mangoes, and the wretched niggers holloed out, ‘Good
massa! Massa brave! Massa no frightened ob nobody!’ Then suddenly there
was a mighty loud barking and up comed a yellow dog, so big as a calf,
and the nigs went off for dear life. ‘Him coming, massa! Him running
like de debbil, sar!’ they shouted out as they went; and then a big chap
arrived at the bottom of the tree and began giving me all the law and the
prophets, I do assure ’e. For it happened to be his tree.
“‘You tief, come down! come down and my dog he tear you. I catch you at
last! It all ober wid you now!’
“‘Not much,’ I said. ‘I ban’t coming down to be tored by thicky hulking
dog, John.’ (Us calls all niggers ‘John.’)
“‘You a tief and you take to gaol, sar. I no go till you come down,’ he
says.
“And I knowed as my ship would sail in two hours or less!
“‘Now list to me, you black ass,’ I says. ‘I thought this here was a wild
tree--as anybody would. You ought to stick your name on the tree. And I
ban’t a thief, and if you call me one, I’ll break your fat head. Just
take the dog and tie him up, then I’ll come down and us’ll have a bit of
a tell about it.’
“‘You tief my mangoes! You lodge in de gaol!’ was all he could think of.
So I told him not to be such a tarnation fool.
“‘There’s your mangoes on the ground,’ I said. ‘I’ll give you a bob for
’em, and if I hear any more about it, I’ll apply to the Governor to have
your beast of a dog shot.’
“’Twas the money done it!
“‘A bob--a bob, massa!’ he says. ‘Dat’s diff’rent, sar! I’se too sorry I
spoke so rude to massa. A bob! Go home, you damn dog!’
“So the dog cleared out and I comed down and gived the heathen his
shilling, and took the mangoes and marched off to the Careenage and
joined my ship. But I’d paid a lot too much money, of course.
“Next morn us got to St Vincent--an island that runs up into the sky,
like a Dartmoor tor, only ’tis a lot larger and the sides of un be
all covered with palms and savage trees. The town lies spread at sea
level--all white and red--and the forest slopes behind with fine trees.
Some of them was blazing with red flowers. A pride of the morning shower
falled just as we got here, and the rain flashed like fire. There was
a rainbow in it, and I never seed such a bright one afore. The caps of
the mountains was hidden in clouds, but the sun touched ’em and made ’em
all rosy; then it swallowed ’em up and drawed ’em into the blazing blue.
There’s Carib Indians to St Vincent, and one Carib be worth five niggers
when it comes to a bit of work. They’ve got a queer sort of religion,
I’m told, though not so queer as the negroes. The niggers’ religion be
called Obeah, and the Obi Men be awful rum customers. Missionaries try
to stop ’em and their goings-on, but Obi mysteries still happen and all
sorts of devilish deeds are done in secret.
“I never knowed a place what smelled worse than Kingstown, St Vincent.
Farmer Chown’s muck-heap’s a fool to it. Niggers be the same here as
everywhere--a poor, slack-witted lot. If you want to see work, you’ve
got to go and look at the coolies in the sugar factories, or the Caribs.
Among niggers only one in a hundred works. T’other ninety-nine look on
and talk and give advice. But they be men and women all right, though
our bosun, Jim Bradley, says ’tis generally thought they haven’t got no
souls. St Vincent be the place where arrowroot comes from. After that
we went down to next island, by name of Grenada, and seed a long row of
rocks sticking out of the sea, which be called the Grenadines. They are
scorched up places--just splashes of yellow rock against the blue sea;
but folks dwell in some of ’em and on some live nought but the wild goats
and pelicans. The fishes in these seas fight like hell, and be always
a-lashing the surface with their fins and tails, seemingly. Can’t live
and let live by the looks of it. A flying-fish do put me in mind of
myself, for he’s always moving on. If he bides in the sea, barracudas and
other chaps go for him, and when he comes out for a sail in the air, the
birds are after him. Then the swordfish go for the porpoises, and the
sharks go for everything.
“Grenada be a bigger place than St Vincent, and very wild up on the
mountains by the look of it. All along the sea runs a strip of silvery
sand, and cocoanut palms almost dip in the water. Our tub called here and
there, and I seed wonderful fine goyles and coombs running inland, all
full of blue air and forests and waterfalls a-tumbling down off great
crags in the mountains. ’Tis an awful savage island as was throwed up by
volcanoes out of the sea once ’pon a time, and will be throwed down again
in like manner sooner or late--so Jim Bradley says.
“Grenada be a wonnerful brave place for nutmegs, which you might not know
grow ’pon trees like almond trees. There be male and female trees, and
one male goes to every ten females. A fine thing, even if you was a tree,
to have ten wives--so Bradley says! But I only want one, and that’s my
dinky Minnie, so brave and so lovely.
“St George, Grenada, we stopped at for a week, and I seed a great deal
of the place. They’ve got a lunatic asylum and a klink there; and they
want ’em both. Niggers often go mad, but it ban’t from over-work, that I
will swear.
“The King of the Caribs lived here, but he was a poor fool and believed
the French. They gived him a few bottles of brandy and he gived them his
island on conditions. But of course they broke the conditions. And pretty
well all the Caribs died fighting. The last of the King’s men jumped into
the sea and was drowned rather than give in.
“The market would make you die of laughing, I’m sure. Never seed such
a chatter of business even to Moreton on a Saturday. Such a row! You’d
think the wealth of the nation was changing hands, but you could buy up
the whole lot pretty near for thirty shilling. But a gay bit of coloured
scenery, I promise you, with the women’s turbans all a-bobbing, like
a million coloured parrots. ’Tis a very fine place for cocoanut palms
also. The little young nuts look like giant acorns in long sprigs. I went
to a nigger man on business and met with some mighty strange sights in
his garden. There was land-crabs lived there and a tame tortoise, and a
nursery of young cocoanut trees and a nursery of young niggers also, for
the man was a family man and had a lot of little people.
“‘Dat my youngest darter,’ he said to me, and pointed to a little maid
playing along with the lizards and things and dressed the same as them.
“‘A very nice darter, too,’ I said to him.
“‘Dat my son ober dar,’ he said, ‘and dat my next youngest son, and dem
gals eating dat shaddock--dey twins.’
“I told him I never seed a braver lot o’ childer, and then he went in
his house and fetched out his wife and his old father and his aunt. And
I praised the lot and told him what a terrible lucky chap he was; and he
got so pleased that he gived me half a barrow-load of fruit.
“There’s a lake inland by the name of Etang, and the niggers say how the
Mother of the Rain lives in. But I told ’em that the Mother o’ Rain lives
homealong with us in Cranmere Pool ’pon Dartymoor. But they wouldn’t
believe that. Anyway, their Mother of Rain belongs to Obeah, and she’m
an awful strong party. ’Tis a wisht, silent place she do live in, all
hid in palms and ferns and wonderful trees blazing with flowers. They
do say the witch comes out of the water of a moony night to sing; but I
don’t know nought about that. I’d go and have a look and see if I could
teel a trap here and there; but there ban’t no game worth naming in these
parts, though Bradley tells me they’ve got deer in Tobago. If there be,
I’ll bring some pairs of their horns home to ’e to stick over the doors
to Hangman’s Hut. How I do wish I was there; but ban’t no good coming
back yet awhile, and when I do, us will have to be awful spry. I wonder
if you’ve found out aught--you or Titus? I daresay such a clever man as
him have got wind of the truth afore now. I be bringing home some pink
coral studs for him. You might let him know it, if you please. I suppose
they’ve gived back my gun to you? They did ought to, since no doubt
everybody thinks I be dead. If you be very pressed for money, sell the
gun to Sim; but not if you can help it.
“Mister Henry Vivian be in Tobago, and I hope as he’ll suffer me to have
speech with him some day soon. ’Twould be a tower of strength to get him
’pon our side. But such a stickler as him and so quick to take a side and
hold to it--he may be against me, and, if so, the less I see of him the
better.
“But I must tell about Trinidad while my paper holds out. We comed to it
after Grenada, and a very fine place it is. And a very terrible sight
I seed in the Court House there, namely, no less than a nigger tried
for murder. The coolies be short-tempered people and often kill their
wives. Then the vultures find ’em in the sugar-canes. But niggers, though
they talk a lot, never kill one another as a rule. This chap had shot a
tax-collector, and the black people in the court didn’t seem to take it
very serious; but the jury fetched it in murder, and he was sentenced to
be hanged, I’m sorry to say. My flesh did cream upon my bones to hear it,
for it might have been me; and them words I should certainly have heard
but for my own way of doing things after they took me. The nigger stood
so steady as if he was cut out of coal. A good plucked man, and went to
his doom like a hero. It took three judges to hang him. They sat under a
great fan in court to keep ’em cool. But all three growed awful hot over
the job. The people thought ’twas very hard on the man, and so did I.
“They’ve got a pitch lake here, and there’s a lot of business doing, and
a racecourse and a railway.
“At Port o’ Spain I met the rummest human that ever I did meet. ’Twas in
a drinking-place what me and Bradley went to one evening. This here chap
was bar-keeper, and his father had been a Norwegian, and his mother had
been a Spaniard from Hayti, and he was born in the Argentine Republic,
and he said he was an Englishman! Swore it afore all-comers! Us told the
man it couldn’t be so--according to the laws of nature; and he got his
wool off something cruel, and cussed in five languages, and axed us who
the blue, blazing hell we thought we were, to come teaching him. He said
he was English to the marrow in his bones; and we proved he couldn’t be,
in good sailor language. Then he said that such trash as us wasn’t going
to be heard afore him; and then we got a bit short like (though not in
liquor, that I promise you) and told the man he was no better than a
something or other mongrel--like everybody else in foreign parts. After
that glasses got flying about, and we slung our hook back to the ship.
But it shows what fools men are, I reckon.
“The coolies put all their money on their wives. And I’d do the same, as
well you know. But they don’t do it in a manner of speaking, but really
and truly, for they hammer all their silver money into nose-rings, and
bracelets, and armlets, and leglets, and their females go chinking about
with the family fortune hanging to ’em, like fruit to a tree. I seed a
lot at a sugar factory nigh Saint Joseph--a little place out over from
Port o’ Spain. One estate there done very well, but others was all
falling to pieces, and the machinery all rusting, and no business doing
at all. The air in a busy factory smells of sugar, and the canes be
smashed between steel rollers, and the juice comes out in a stream, like
a moor brook. Then they set to work and, after a lot of things have been
done to this here juice, including boiling, it turns into brown sugar.
And the remains be treacle, and the crushed cane is used for firing. They
also make rum out of sugar-cane, and very cheerful drinking ’tis. The
coolie girls be awful purty--so brown as my Minnie, with dark eyes that
flash. But they keep themselves to themselves. They wouldn’t keep company
or go out walking with a sailor man for the world. And their men folks be
very short and sharp with them. One gal was singing and scrubbing a floor
when I catched sight of her. All in red she was, with silver bangles on
her arms, and wonnerful glimmering eyes, and not a day more than thirteen
years old. ‘That’s a purty child,’ I said to Jim Bradley. ‘Child be
damned,’ he said in his short way. ‘She’s a growed woman and very like
got a family.’ The truth is that they be grandmothers at thirty. But I’ve
only seen one purtier girl in all my born days, and that’s my gal.
“All the machinery in Trinidad be worked with cocoanut oil. ’Tis a very
funny smell, but you soon get used to it.
“Our next port was Tobago, and here we shall bide for a good while and
let our fires out and have a go at the boilers. This letter will go off
from there to you, and I do hope and trust as it will find you as it
leaves me at present, my dear wife. Ban’t much good for me to ax you to
write the news, because you wouldn’t know where to send it. But I hope
afore next year be out that we’ll come together again, and your poor chap
will be proved an innocent man.
“I’ll send you three pound from here presently, and another letter along
with it. If there’s any good news and the charges don’t run too high, you
might send a telegram on getting this letter, to ‘Bob Bates, Steamship
_Peabody_, Bridgetown, Barbados.’ We go back there in three weeks, and
shall be there afore you get this. I be ‘Bob Bates’ now, and shall remain
so for the present till I can be Dan Sweetland again without running my
neck in the rope.
“Lord save us, but how I do long to be squeezing my own true wife! Awful
rough luck we’ve had, but there’s a better time coming. Tell mother and
father all about me, but make ’em swear on father’s old Bible fust that
they’ll name it to none else. They can hear bits of this letter, but not
all. I’m sending you twenty thousand kisses. I wish to God I was bringing
’em. Last thing I done at Trinidad was to cut your name and mine on a
great aloe leaf in the Botanical Garden when nobody was looking. And
over ’em I scratched two hearts with a arrow skewered through. They aloe
leaves live for ever, I’m told; so our names will be there for people
to see long after we be dead and gone, I hope. But that won’t be for a
mighty long time yet, please God.
“I may say that I’ve growed a bit religious since we parted. Ban’t
nothing to name and won’t make any difference in my feelings to old
friends, but you can’t see the Lord’s wonders in the Deep without growing
a bit thoughtful like. And if by good chance I ever get back to you and
stand afore the world clear of the killing of poor Adam Thorpe, then I
shall be a church-member for ever more--or else a chapel member--which
you like best. But one for sartain. So no more at present, from your
faithful husband till death,
DANIEL SWEETLAND.”