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 Venus 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 
sensation 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 mito the vessels at their anchorage; before, 
a vertical wall 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— 
ee 
