HAITIAN CONTRASTS AND BEGINNINGS 



this great craft with only the motive power of 

 Columbus, manipulated amid narrow, crooked 

 channels more skillfully than many a yacht im- 

 pelled with electricity or steam. 



The delicately graded stress of pulleys became a 

 real thing to me this day as I watched a man lower 

 a sail alone — a sail and gaff which would have 

 crushed him flat had their weight not been distri- 

 buted. Again the queen ant came to mind, for 

 when she alights she too furls her wings, but it was 

 not until a day or two later that the climax of the 

 simile occurred, for then I watched the sailors 

 untying rope after rope, rolling up the huge sails 

 and dropping them into the dark hold; exactly as I 

 have seen the queen, after her marriage flight, twist 

 and bend and bite off her wings before beginning 

 the shallow pit which in time will seethe with a 

 million tenants. 



At last the schooner stood bare, with her four 

 masts rising up and up from the deck forever, like 

 the slim, endless spires of French bayonets. She 

 was stripped for action with a vengeance, and the 

 action began at once. Out of the hold came Ford 

 trucks, glass-bottomed and motor-boats, and tents, 

 as well as five bags of tent-pegs. It then occurred 

 to us that one does not drive pegs into the deck of 

 a vessel, especially with the captain looking on. 

 Up went the tents, and probably no stranger sight 

 was ever seen on a schooner than the hatches and 

 decks covered with a colony of these structures. 

 We threw aside the tent-pegs, for lack of yielding 



13 



