26 THE VOYAGE. 



have been a good hack, but he certainly did not 

 look so as he waddled lazily along with his sable 

 rider. 



The inhabitants, with few exceptions, are 

 blacks. There was one girl (the property of as 

 repulsive an old demon as one could well see) 

 perfectly blonde, fair even to paleness, with soft 

 blue eyes and long golden hair, that hung in 

 wavy ripples down to her waist her feet and 

 hands delicately small, and a figure Yenus might 

 have envied. Where she came from no one 

 knew : one might have supposed her the de- 

 scendant of some Viking, if Vikings had ever 

 cruised in the Pacific. Perhaps her owner was 

 a ' Black Pirate,' who stole the damsel, and 

 knifed her friends ; not bad material for a 

 semation story ' The Fair Captive of Tobago.' 



The view from the summit was exceedingly 

 lovely. Behind, and to the right and left, the 

 dark-green slope looked as if one could have 

 slid into the vessels at their anchorage ; before, 

 a vertical w r all of rock a thousand feet from 

 the sea. It looked to me as if the island 

 had been broken in two in the centre, and 

 that one-half had sunk into the water and dis- 

 appeared; the air quivered even at this height, 

 as it does over a limekiln ; not a leaf stirred 



