that we have just passed Watling’s Island (the San Salvador of the early explorers) and a lot of other little islands; while a row of tiny dots shows that we are somewhere near the Tropic of Cancer. Daddy tells of watching until late last night to make out the light on San Salvador, and how it blinked up finally from the waves far ahead on our starboard bow and as quickly disappeared, to gradually grow brighter as we brought it abeam of us—our first smell of land since we dropped the bleak shore of New Jersey. My eyes tell me as they look seaward that we have left the great lonely waste of the Atlantic and have come into sweeter waters, on seas of heavenly rest, which flow away from us as do the rolling white clouds above. I watch dreamily the shoals of flying fish darting aside from under the bow in long low lines of flashing silver; and I look away to where ships come up from over the meeting of sky and ocean.
I know now why Rudolph can not give it up.
CHAPTER II.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAÏTI
I.
FROM the rising of the sun to its sudden drop into the sea, this has been a funny day in Haïti, our first land-fall. All night we had been threading through the dangerous shoals and past the lower islands of the Bahama group, until at last we turned into that great thoroughfare, the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haïti, and finally were at rest in the harbour of Port-au-Prince. Knowing that we were to make port this morning, I was awakened very early by the delightsome expectation of the sight of a green earth; and long before Little Blue Ribbons and Sister had stirred with the spirit of a new day, I had scurried through the corridor to my delicious salt tub. The ship lay very still. It but just felt the finger-tips of the ocean’s caress. A sweet, warm, gentle, alluring air filtered in through the open port-hole and permeated my body with the delicious intoxication of summer. I threw myself into the bath with every pore a-quiver for its cool refreshment, and as the briny water spread its arms about me, I looked out upon the sea, where my first tropical sunrise burst upon me. It was such a businesslike performance that I laughed right in old Sol’s face, and splattered water at him through the port-hole; it served him right for being so abominably prosaic. Five minutes before his appearance, there was not the slightest indication in the sky that anything was about to happen, no fireworks, no signals, no red lights, nothing but the dull blue sky of early morning. When, all at once, a bright red tip peeps over the water, and in three minutes the big, round ball is on hand, ready for business, whereupon he blazes away fortissimo from the start. It was rude and ill-mannered of him to intrude upon my bath, but it seemed to be his way with the ladies, so I fled to find Sister and Wee One in wildest joy, on their knees in bed crowding their pretty heads together for a peep at the wonderful land about them. The ship had swung to her anchor, and lay bow-on to Port-au-Prince, while to starboard was a range of lofty mountains which clambered and struggled and budded and blossomed into the white sky of morning.
The sudden call of Summer, the eternal loveliness of warmth, the expansion of the soul from out the chill of ice and snow, into the bliss of laughing seas and delicious sunlight; the sight of green, graceful palms bending their stately heads to the summons of the morning, the merry wavelets frolicking, splashing, laughing, calling to us—Summer—Summer—Summer—was all so intoxicating that, had the choice been possible, who knows but we would have bartered our very souls, with but little hesitancy, for a lifetime of such sensation!
There was something akin to emancipation in the pile of airy frocks which lay waiting for Sister and Little Blue Ribbons, and if our fingers hadn’t been all thumbs, and if we hadn’t been on our knees half the time in the berth, peering out from the port-hole, we could have donned the summer glories a full hour sooner, and might have been on deck in the open with all the sweets of the early tropical morning about us. But, what could one do but look and marvel, when the sea about us was swarming with tiny boats, laden with treasures of the deep and of the forest? What would you do, now, tell me, if, after long dreaming of the Islands of the Blest, you suddenly awakened to find them really true, and your own dear self in the midst of them? Why bless your heart! You would have looked, and laughed, and wondered, just as we did, and have been for ever dressing, too.
Long, long ago, when I was a “Little Sister,” my boon companion had a parrot given her, and one day it screamed horribly and bit me, and ever after I held a vengeful spirit for the whole parrot family. But that morning at Haïti—ah! that first soft morning, when the jabbering black Haïtiens came to us with corals and parrots and strange, freaky fruits, a fierce fancy possessed me to buy a parrot. Of course, the morning was to blame for it. I was really not a free agent. It was a delusion that, somehow, if I bought the parrot, the summer would be thrown in with it. But dear, sensible Sister, my judge and jury and supreme court on all occasions, thought it a foolish idea, so we didn’t nod “yes” through the port-hole; we only shook our heads and laughed. But the parrot man didn’t have time to answer back, for, before he knew it, a newcomer bumped into the bow of his skiff and made him very angry; so he gave way in short order, for the late arrival didn’t carry any parrots or coral, or anything to sell; it carried a very tall, black man, who stood immovably in the centre of the craft. “Oh! Come, Sister, I know it’s the President, it must be!” He wore a tall silk hat, with an ancient straight brim, and a black frock coat and a terribly solemn expression. But we were mistaken after all; it was only the health officer. We were sure one of those rollicking waves would spill him over, but, alas, the shiny old stovepipe rose and fell with the precision of a clock and nothing happened, and we were so disappointed! Then it disappeared up the ladder, and we buttoned up a bit more and were dressed at last.
II.
Port-au-Prince is as daintily hidden away in the folds of the mountains, as a lace handkerchief in the chatelaine of a beautiful woman. There seemed to be nothing left undone by Nature to make it, in point of location, a chosen spot, hidden from the curious world: a realm of bliss for lovers to abide in. Port-au-Prince was once called the “Paris of the West Indies;” that is, when the French were its masters and the blacks their slaves. It is not so now, for when the blacks revolted and drove their masters from the land, the death-knell of civilisation was sounded. It is the capital of the Black Republic of Haïti, the paradise of the negro, where to be black is the envied distinction; where the white man can scarcely hold property without confiscation in some form; where the negro is the high-cockalorum. Yes, it was called Paris, but that was long, long ago. Poor little town! It is now the forlornest, dirtiest little rag-a-muffin in the whole world, still trying to strut a bit, but in truth a ridiculous caricature of civilisation.
As we approached land, the character of the place
