BENEATH TROPIC SEAS 



ered to this tropic sun and air, infinitely more 

 modest and sane than his hopeless attempts at 

 conventional dress. Clad as I was only in abbrevi- 

 ated swimming trunks, my fair skin would have 

 been an offence beside his were it not that in two 

 months of constant exposure I had attained the hue 

 of a dark mulatto. 



My Haitian also stopped at the conch shell, 

 picked it up and, disentangling a rusty knife from 

 his shreds of civilization he cut out a section of the 

 mollusk and ate it. It was so natural a use of the 

 beach and so skillfully done that I felt like with- 

 drawing the stigma of trespasser and classing him 

 with the native heron. 



A mockingbird began to sing directly behind me 

 and for many minutes drowned out the sound of 

 human voices in the distance. My cuckoo croaked 

 overhead and spat down berry pits into my land- 

 locked boat. Then magic began in the boat itself. 

 The bottom boards had long since rotted away and 

 I sat on a mat of dry mangrove leaves. As if at a 

 signal these leaves began to shift and lift and rub 

 noisily against one another like recently crumpled 

 papers in a waste basket. The morning breeze 

 had not yet sprung up and I sat waiting for the 

 elves which haunt old boats. In half a minute 

 a dozen fiddler crabs bustled forth and, with one 

 impulse, immediately vanished. I was comfort- 

 ably frozen and had not frightened them, but the 

 actual cause was as satisfying as the sight of the 

 crabs themselves. A small green cockroach flew 



52 



