Plotting in Pirate Seas Part 23

"A Scoop!"

Stuart slept the clock round. It was evening again when he awoke. A wash to take the sleep out of his eyes, and down he went to see how big a dinner he could put away. But the doorman at the hotel, an East Indian, came forward to him with a telegram on a salver. The boy tore it open, and read:

"GOOD--STUFF--SEND--SOME MORE--FERGUS."

And if Stuart had been offered the Governor Generals.h.i.+p of all the West Indian Islands put together, he could not have been more proud.

He spent the evening interviewing some of the pa.s.sengers who had come on the mail steamer the day before and who had stayed in Port of Spain and, before midnight, filed at the cable office a good "second-day story."

Remembering what his friend the reporter had told him, Stuart realized that though he was still sending this matter to Fergus, as it was straight news stuff, it probably was being handled by the Night Telegraph staff. That would not help to fill Fergus' columns in the Sunday issue, and the boy realized that, no matter what live day stuff he got hold of, he must not fall behind in his series of articles on the Color Question in the West Indies.

This question--which takes on the proportions of a problem in everyone of the West Indian Islands--was very different in Trinidad than in Barbados. The peoples and languages of Trinidad are strangely mixed.

Though it is an English colony, yet the language of the best families is Spanish, and the general language of the negro population is Creole French, a subvariant of that of Haiti. The boy found, too, on his first long walks in the neighborhood of Port-of-Spain, that there was a large outer settlement of East Indian coolies, and quite a number of Chinese.

The English, in Trinidad, were few in number.

In his quest for interviews about the hurricane, one of the chattiest of Stuart's informants had been a Mr. James, a resident of Barbados, but whose commercial interests were mainly in Trinidad. Since, then, this gentleman evidently knew the life in both islands, his comparisons would be of value, and the following day Stuart asked him for a second interview.

"I'm starting out to my place on the Nariva Cocal," the planter replied, "going in about an hour. Very glad to have you as my guest, if you wish, and the trip will give you a good view of the island. Then we can chat on the way."

Stuart jumped at the opportunity. This was exactly what he was after, for the Nariva Cocal, with its thirteen-mile long coco-nut grove on the sh.o.r.e of the ocean, is famous. The boy knew, too, that this section was very difficult of access, the Nariva River forming a mixture of river, tidal creek, lagoon, mangrove swamp and marsh, hard to cross.

For some little distance out of Port-of-Spain the train pa.s.sed through true tropical forests of a verdure not to be outrivaled in any part of the New World. "Here," says Treves, "is a very revel of green, a h.o.a.rd, a pyramid, a piled-up cairn of green, rising aloft from an iris-blue sea. Here are the dull green of wet moss, the clear green of the parrot's wing, the green tints of old copper, of malachite, of the wild apple, the bronze-green of the beetle's back, the dead green of the autumn Nile." And these are expressed, not in plants, but in trees. The moss is waist-high, the ferns wave twenty feet overhead, the bamboo drapes a feathery fringe by every stream, the cocoa trees grow right up to the road or railroad which sweeps along as on an avenue between them, while at every crossing the white roadway is lined by the majestic sentinels of plantain, coco-nut palm and breadfruit tree.

Beyond St. Joseph, the ground became a low plain, level and monotonous, and given over to sugar-cane. Near d'Abadie, this crop gave place to cocoa, the staple of the center of the island, and this extended through Arima to Sangre Grande, the terminus of the railroad. During the trip Stuart's host had enlightened him by an exact and painstaking description of the growing of these various crops and the methods of their preparation for market.

At Sangre Grande, the railroad ended and a two-wheeled buggy was waiting. The planter ordered the East Indian driver to follow in the motor-bus which conveys pa.s.sengers to Manzanilla, and took the reins himself, so as to give a place to Stuart. The road had left the level, and pa.s.sed over low hills and valleys all given over to cocoa trees.

"See those bottles!" commented Mr. James, pointing to bottles daubed with paint, bunches of white feathers and similar objects hung on trees at various points of the road.

"Yes," answered Stuart, "what are they for?"

"Those are our police!" the planter explained. "This colony is well governed, but planters have had a good deal of trouble keeping the negroes from stealing. We used to engage a number of watchmen, and the police force in this part of the island was increased. It didn't do any good, you know! Stealing went on just the same.

"So my partner, down here, went and got hold of the chief Obeah-man or witch-doctor of the island--paid him a good stiff price, too--and asked him to put a charm on the plantation. He did it, and those bottles and feathers are some of the charms. We pay for having them renewed every year. It costs a tidy bit, but less than the watchmen and police did."

"And have the thefts stopped?"

"Absolutely. There hasn't been a s.h.i.+lling's worth of stuff touched since the obeah-man was here."

"But obeah wouldn't have any effect on East Indian coolies," objected Stuart.

"Coolies don't steal," was the terse reply, "those that are Mohammedans don't, any way. Trinidad negroes do. They're different from the Barbadian negroes, quite different. Obeah seems to be about the only thing they care about."

"I ran up against some Obeah in Haiti," remarked Stuart, "though Voodoo is stronger there."

"I never heard of much real Voodoo stuff here in the Windward Islands,"

the planter rejoined, "but Obeah plays a big part in negro life. And, as I was just telling you, the whites aren't above using it, sometimes."

"In Haiti," responded Stuart, "Father and I once found an Obeah sign in the road. Father, who knows a lot about those things, read it as a charm to prevent any white man going that way. I thought it was silly to pay any attention, but Father made a long detour around it. A week or so after I heard that a white trader had been driving along that road, and he drove right over the sign. Half a mile on, his horse took fright, threw him out of the buggy and he was killed."

The planter shrugged his shoulders.

"I know," he said. "It's all right to call it coincidence, but down in these islands that kind of coincidence happens a bit too often. For me, I'll throw a s.h.i.+lling to an Obeah-man any time I see one, and I won't play any tricks with charms if I know enough about them to keep away."

The buggy jogged along at a smart pace until the sh.o.r.e was reached, and then set down the beach over the hard wet sand. On the one side heaved the long rollers of the Atlantic, on the other was the continuous grove of coco-nut palms, thirteen miles long, one of the finest unbroken stretches in the entire world.

A hospitable welcome was extended to Stuart at the house of the Nariva Cocal, and, after dinner, the planter took him to the sh.o.r.es of the Nariva River, not more than twenty or thirty yards from the house, which, at this place, had a bank free of marsh for a distance of perhaps a couple of hundred yards.

"It was just at a place like this, but a little higher up-stream," said the planter, "that the snake story happened which Kingsley described in 'At Last.' Four girls were bathing in this river, because the surf is too heavy for sea-bathing, and one of them, who had gone into the water partly dressed, felt something clutch at her dress.

"It was a huge anaconda.

"The other three girls, with a good deal of pluck, I think, rushed into the shallow water and grabbed hold of their comrade. The snake did not let go, but the dress was torn from her body by the wrestle between the strength of the reptile and that of the four girls. I know one of the sisters quite well. She's an old woman, now, but she lives in Sangre Grande, still."

Turning from the river, Stuart and the planter strolled some distance down the knife-like sandy ridge between the ocean and the swamp. This narrow ridge, at no point a hundred yards wide and averaging less than half that, contains over 300,000 palms, and this plantation alone helps to make Trinidad one of the greatest coco-nut markets of the world.

"I notice," said Stuart, anxious to get material for his articles, "that nearly all your laborers here are East Indian coolies. Are they better than negroes?"

"They come here under different conditions," explained the planter. "The negro is free to work or not, as he chooses, but the coolie is indentured. He has to work. He earns less than the negro, but, by the time we pay his voyage and all the various obligations that we have to undertake for an indentured laborer, the coolie isn't much cheaper to us than the negro. But, while the negro can do more work in a day than the coolie, he won't. Moreover, if he feels, after a few days' work, that he has had enough of it, he just goes away. A Trinidad negro with a pound or two in his pocket won't do a tap of work until the last penny be spent. The coolie will work quietly, steadily, continuously. What is more, he saves his money. That's bringing about a deuced curious situation in Trinidad, you know.

"One of the queer things about the West Indies, as you know yourself, having lived in Cuba, is that there is really no middle cla.s.s. Here, in Trinidad, there are the wealthy Spanish families and the English officials and planters. The blacks are the laborers. For many decades there has been no cla.s.s between. Now, the East Indians, who came here as coolies, are beginning to follow the commercial instinct of the east, and to open small shops or to buy land. Hence the negro, who used to despise and look down on the coolie because he worked for even less money, is now finding himself subordinate to an East Indian cla.s.s which has risen to be his superior. Then the East Indians have commenced rice-growing, and now are employing negroes, oversetting the old social basis.

"There's one thing, son, which few people realize in this color question in the West Indies. That is that the negro has not got the instincts of a shopkeeper. He doesn't take to trade, ever. If he gets educated, he wants at once to be a doctor, a lawyer, or, still more, a preacher. But this is a commercial age, and any race which shows itself unfitted for commerce is bound to stay the under dog, you know. Trinidad shows that, given equal conditions, the East Indian coolie will rise, the negro will not."

The following morning, Mr. James having gone over the books of the plantation with his manager, the two started back for Port-of-Spain.

"Why don't you live here, Mr. James?" asked the boy. "It's a lovely spot, in that coco-nut grove, with the sea right at your doors."

"Climate, my boy," was the answer. "I told you, on the way over here, that Trinidad is reckoned one of the most prosperous islands of the West Indies--though it really belongs more to the coast of South America than it does to the Antilles--but, if you stop to think for a moment, you'll see that the prosperity of Trinidad is due to the fact that it has a warm, moist, even climate all the year round. That's fine for cocoa and coco-nuts, but it's not good for humans. The warm moist air of Trinidad is deuced enervating. No, let me go back to Barbados. It may not be as beautiful--I'll admit that it isn't--but at least there is a north-east breeze nearly all the year round to keep me jolly cool."

The two travelers talked of various subjects, but, once more aboard the train at Sangre Grande, the question of Trinidad's wealth recurred to Stuart, and he sought further information.

"You spoke of the island as being prosperous, Mr. James," he said. "Has the Pitch Lake, discovered so many centuries ago by Sir Walter Raleigh, had anything to do with it?"

"Directly, not such a great deal, though, of course, it is a steady source of income, especially to the Crown. Asphalt is less than a twentieth part of the value of the exports of the island, so, you see, Trinidad would have been rich without that. Indirectly, of course, the Pitch Lake has been the means of attracting attention to the island, especially in earlier times. The facts that Trinidad is out of the hurricane track and off the earthquake belt have had a good deal to do with its prosperity, too, you know. My friend Cecil always declares that Trinidad and Jamaica together, the two richest of the West Indian islands, ought to run the whole cl.u.s.ter of Caribbean islands, just as little England runs the whole British Empire."

"Who was it said that?" asked Stuart curiously, though his heart was thumping with excitement.

"A chap I know, Cecil, Guy Cecil, sort of a globe-trotter. One of the biggest shareholders in this Pitch Lake. Funny sort of Johnny. Know him?"

"I--I think I've met him," answered the boy. "Tall, eyes a very light blue, almost colorless, speaks very correct English, fussy about his clothes and doesn't talk about himself much."

"That's the very man!" cried the planter, "I couldn't have described him better myself. Where did you meet him?"

Stuart answered non-committally and steered the subject into other channels, determining within himself that he would certainly go out to the Pitch Lake, if only with the hope of finding out something more about this mysterious Guy Cecil, whose name seemed to be cropping up everywhere.

The following day, having seen his friend the planter off on the homeward bound mail steamer, Stuart prepared for his visit to the famous Pitch Lake, though the planter had warned him that he would be disappointed.

Going by railway to Fernando, Stuart took a small steamer to La Brea, the s.h.i.+pping point for the asphalt, a town, which, by reason of its a.s.sociation with pitch, has a strange and unnatural air. The beach is covered with pieces of pitch, encrusted with sand and stones, worn by the water into the most grotesque shapes and forming so many resting-places for hundreds of pelicans. Some of these blocks of hardened asphalt had been polished by the sea until they shone like jewels of jet as large as a table, others, fringed with green seaweed, gave the sh.o.r.e an uncanny appearance of a sea-beach not of this earth.