of 'the greatest undertaking of our age,' but my curiosity
was less strong than my disgust. I did not see the place and the
description which I have given is probably too highly coloured. The
accounts which reached me, however, were uniform and consistent. Not one
person whom I met and who could speak from personal knowledge had any
other story to tell.

We looked again into St. Lucia on our way. The training squadron was
lying outside, and the harbour was covered with boats full of
blue-jackets. The big ships were rolling heavily. They could have eaten
up Rodney's fleet. The great 'Ville de Paris' would have been a mouthful
to the smallest of them. Man for man, officers and crew were as good as
Rodney ever commanded. Yet, somehow, they produce small effect on the
imagination of the colonists. The impression is that they are meant more
for show than for serious use. Alas! the stars and stripes on a Yankee
trader have more to say in the West Indies than the white ensigns of a
fleet of British iron-clads.

At Barbadoes there was nothing more for me to do or see. The English
mail was on the point of sailing, and I hastened on board. One does not
realise distance on maps. Jamaica belongs to the West Indies, and the
West Indies are a collective entity. Yet it is removed from the Antilles
by the diameter of the Caribbean Sea, and is farther off than Gibraltar
from Southampton. Thus it was a voyage of several days, and I looked
about to see who were to be my companions. There were several Spaniards,
one or two English tourists, and some ladies who never left their
cabins. The captain was the most remarkable figure: an elderly man with
one eye lost or injured, the other as peremptory as I have often seen in
a human face; rough and prickly on the outside as a pineapple,
internally very much resembling the same fruit, for at the bottom he was
true, genuine, and kindly hearted, very amusing, and intimately known to
all travellers on the West Indian line, in the service of which he had
passed forty years of his life. In his own ship he was sovereign and
recognised no superior. Bishops, colonial governors, presidents of South
American republics were, so far as their office went, no more to him
than other people, and as long as they were on board were chattels of
which he had temporary charge. Peer and peasant were alike under his
orders, which were absolute as the laws of Medes and Persians. On the
other hand, his eye was quick to