Chapter One.

Mount Pleasant.

“Jake!”

“Dat me, Mass’ Tom.”

“Have you heard the gun fire yet?”

“Golly, no, Mass’ Tom.”

“Then you must go up the hill at once and see whether the mail steamer has been signalled or not. She ought to have been in sight by now; for, she’s been expected since early this morning, and we’re all anxious about the news from England.”

“All right, Mass’ Tom, me go for see, suah.”

“Look alive then, Jake, and lose no more time in starting. Let me just see how quickly you can get up to the Battery and back again; and mind, Jake, if the packet should be in, you can saddle my pony when you return for me to ride into town.”

“Berry well, Mass’ Tom. I’se spec, railly for true, um go dere in brace of shakes, an’ back ’gain hyar ’fore dat lazy ole niggah Pomp fetch him cutlash out o’ stable an’ go in bush to cut him guinea-grass for de hosses. Golly, dat so, Mass’ Tom—see if um don’t for suah, yah, yah!”

Jake broke off into a huge guffaw, as he shouted out these hurried words in high glee, laughing with all that hearty abandon which was such a strong characteristic of his genuine African nature. Such was the intensity of his merriment, indeed, that he opened his wide red-lipped mouth almost from ear to ear, disclosing a brilliant set of shining teeth, whose ivory whiteness contrasted conspicuously with the jetty blackness of his sable skin. The willing fellow then went off on his mission at a slinging jog-trot, evidently determined to make his promise good of outstripping his more lethargic rival Pompey, whom he was absurdly jealous of and ever eager to surpass in every way he could.

I watched him on his onward way from the raised terrace, laid out as an ornamental garden, in front of our square, one-storied, shingle-roofed, verandah-encircled West Indian home—which lay nestled in a gorgeous wealth of tropical foliage and was perched half-way up the side of a mountain peak that protected it from hurricane blasts in the rear; and, I could see Jake spinning rapidly along the winding carriage drive, bordered with cocoa-nut trees and grou-grou palms in lieu of the oaks and elms of old England. In another second, ere the sound of his merry chuckle had ceased to re-echo in the distance, he had passed through the swing-gate that gave admittance to the grounds.

The lawn sloped downwards from the house, following the curve of the hill, and was studded with orange-trees, whose golden fruit peeped through their shining green leaves, shaddocks, and mangosteen, with many a stately palmiste rearing its tall feathery head above the others; while, in addition, the wild locust, or iron-wood tree, the mammee apple, the pomme-rose and the guava bush flourished between huge blocks of stone, with flat table surfaces and of probable volcanic origin, that seemed to have been thrown at random upon the surface of the grassy expanse, where they now rested, monoliths of the past.

As the gate swung back upon its hinges with a clang, Jake’s woolly head, surmounted by the veriest wisp of a ragged red handkerchief, disappeared behind the thick and impenetrable hedge of thorny cactus and spike-guarded prickly-pear that inclosed the plantation, separating it from the main-road forming its boundary and leading, some four miles or so beyond, over mountain and gully to Saint George’s, the capital town of Grenada, the most southern of the group of the Windward Islands—a spot where the earlier days of my rather adventurous life were passed and which is endeared to me by all the vivid associations of youth, the fond recollections of memory.

Our place was aptly named “Mount Pleasant,” and well do I remember every salient feature of it—the forest of lofty silk-cotton trees, bordered on the left by a row of the curious bois immortel, with its blood-red branches that had blossomed into flowers; the mountain slope covered with green waving guinea-grass at the back; and in front the park-like lawn already described. To the right was a long range of negro huts and stabling; and, beyond these again the kitchen-garden or “provision ground,” prolific of sweet-potatoes, yams, and tanias, with plantain and banana trees laden with pendent bunches of their sausage-shaped fruit and hedged round with pine-apples. Stretching away still further in the distance was the cocoa plantation, a sea of verdure, interspersed with the darker green foliage of the nutmeg and wax-like clove-tree. Here reigned in all its majesty the bread-fruit tree, with broad serrated leaves, like a gigantic horse-chestnut, sheltering the more fragile trees that grow only beneath its shadow, and acting as the “mother of the cocoa”—el madre del cacao—as the Spaniards call it.

But, I wish to go back now to the memorable day when Jake set off so briskly on his errand to see if the English mail steamer had arrived, leaving me on the terrace in front of our house wondering, as he speeded on his way, whether the packet was in sight; and, if she had been signalled, trying to surmise what news she would bring.

I was really very anxious about the matter, and I will tell you the reason why.

My father was an officer of the royal navy, who found it a hard thing, with an increasing family, to make both ends meet in the mother country on his half-pay. At last, sick of waiting for active employment afloat during the long stagnation in the service occasioned by the interregnum of peace that lasted almost from Waterloo up to the time of the Crimean war, he determined, like Cincinnatus, to “beat his sword into a ploughshare.” In other words, he abandoned the fickle element on which he had passed the early days of his manhood and emigrated to the West Indies, to see whether he might not improve his fortunes by investing what little capital he had in a coffee and cocoa plantation in the island where my scene opens. A couple of months or so before, he had taken a trip across the Atlantic to arrange some money matters with his London agent, and we were now expecting his return by every mail. Beyond this, my father had more than half-hinted that, as soon as he got back to Grenada, he would send me over to England in my turn to go to school, when, most likely, I would have to bid adieu to my West Indian home for good and all; for, my fervent desire was to follow in dad’s footsteps and enter the navy as soon as I was able to pass the admiralty examination—a desire to which dad, in spite of the scurvy way in which he had been treated by an ungrateful country, did not say nay, his ambition being that I should succeed where he failed if possible, for he was a true sailor and hankered after the sea yet.

It was not surprising, therefore, that I was so eager to learn whether the packet had come in, albeit her arrival would naturally bring to an end the little brief authority which I had been so proud to assume during dad’s absence as the protector of my mother and sisters, besides being regarded by all the negro hands as “um lilly massa of um plantashun.” Really, I esteemed myself at that period to be a most important and highly dignified person, being only a boy of thirteen years old then, and small-grown for my age at that!

Jake had scarcely been out of sight five minutes when I began to look out for his return. My impatience, indeed, quite got the better of my reason, for I ought to have known well enough, if I had only considered, that he could not have yet half accomplished the journey to the signal station on Richmond Hill, much less thought even of coming back, the willing darkey being as unable as anyone else to annihilate distance or space!

It was a terribly hot day, being close on to the noontide hour, the thermometer under the shade of the