154 On the trail of vanishing birds 



designer. When we had hauled the craft and its owner aboard, 

 Forsyth said, "Montour, what in Heaven's name are we supposed 

 to do with this leaky coffin?" Montour pretended to be quite 

 offended, sputtering with injured dignity. "You vill see, Com- 

 missioner/' he protested. "My mind tell me you vill see and ap- 

 prove, sor. Yes, yes, see and approve. And the Lord vill be with 

 us, indeed He vill." "My man," said Forsyth in his best magisterial 

 tone, with a forefinger raised admonishingly, "don't change the 

 subject. The Lord is too busy with important matters to be in- 

 terested in your miserable excuse for a boat. And what I want to 

 know is, what are you intending to do with it?" But Montour 

 was really injured now and, mumbling to himself, he turned the 

 little craft over on the foredeck and lashed it securely. 



Just before dark we approached Green Turtle Cay, sailing along 

 easily in a light breeze. On three tiny cays that were covered with 

 opuntia cactus, sooty terns were evidently nesting, and Rodney 

 pointed out that because of the spines in the thickly growing 

 plants, the eggs would be safe from marauding natives. Running 

 on in the early darkness until long past eight o'clock, we anchored 

 off the settlement at Green Turtle Cay for the night. Going ashore 

 for some stores that had not been available in Marsh Harbour, 

 we found the doorways full of people, although not a light was 

 showing. The wooden houses, nearly half of them deserted, are 

 crowded closely together, with scarcely two feet between many of 

 them. And the entire village, in consequence, is jammed all in 

 a heap at one end of what is actually a rather large island. The 

 ancestors of these people were supposed to have been city bred, 

 London dockside in large measure, and even in five generations 

 they had not learned to live like country folk, with the comfort and 

 freedom of wide spaces around them. At Marsh Harbour, while 

 waiting for Rodney, we talked with a number of the inhabitants. 

 Many of the oldest Abaco families have been in the Bahamas 

 since the end of the American Revolution, when officers and men 

 of Cornwallis's army were settled here as colonists. There had 

 been the usual hard times, but along in the nineteenth century 

 prosperity had come to those who excelled at the boatbuilding 

 trade, while others had done well for themselves during the 



