No Defense, Volume 3_

he had made his own. They lay on the Thomas River, a few hours' horseback travelling from Spanish Town, the capit

breakfast of his people, had seen festivities of his negroes, and the feast given by his manager in Creole style to all who came-planting attorne

th its blossom like a passion-flower, the black Tahiti plum, with its bright pink tassel-blossom, and the fine mango trees, loaded half with fruit and half with bud. In the distance were the guinea cornfields of brownish hue, the cotton-fields, the long ranges of negro houses like thatched cottages, the penguin hedges, with their beautiful red, blue, and white convolvuluses; the lime, logwood, and breadfruit trees, the avoca

e the lowest tradesmen drank wine after dinner, and rum, brandy and water, or sangaree in the forenoon, a somewhat lightsome view of table-virtues might have

Dyck

rch. If he entered it, even to-day, he would have seen no more than a hundred and fifty to two hundred people; mostly mulattoes-"bronze ornaments"-and peasants in shag trousers, jackets of coars

ilies born to the black women, and that the girls had no married future. They would become the temporary wives of white men, to whom they were on the whole faithful and devoted. It did n

ntries from which the white man had come. It did not even startle Dyck that all the planters, and the people generall

he was writing to one from whom he had heard nothing since the night he enli

AR FR

e with you. I was imprisoned for killing your father, Erris Boyne, and that separates us like an abysss. It matters little whether I killed him or not; the law says I did, and the law has taken its toll of me. I was in pri

sent over to the Ariadne with Captain Ivy to read the admiral's letter to the seamen, and then, by consent of the admiral, to leave again with Michael Clones for Jamaica, where he was set ashore with t

over the unpaved street into Kingston from Spanish Town with his suite, ornate with his governorship. He was a startling figure in scarlet, with huge epaulets on his lieutenant-general's uniform, as big a pot as ever boiled on any fire-chancellor, head

r there will be a French naval descent or whether the blacks in his own island will do as the blacks in St. Domingo did-massacre the white people in thousands. Or whether the free blacks, the Maroons, who got their freedom by treaty with Governor Trelawney, when the British comma

have ill-used the slaves? The local councils who have power to punish never proceed against white men with rigour; and to preserve a fair balance between the white man up above and the black down below is the respons

d his way, and I was given freedom of the whole island till word should come from the Admiralty what should be done with me. To the governor's mind it was dangerous allowing me freedom, a man convicted of crime, who had been imprisoned, had been a mutineer, had stolen one of his majesty's ships,

fowl. Every bed was thus free, and there was land to be got for a song, enough to grow what would suffice for two men's daily wants. But we did not rest long upon the land-I have it still, land which cost me five pounds out of the twenty, and for the rest there was an old but on the little place-five acres it was, and good land too, where you could grow anything at all. Heaven knows what we might have become in that tiny plantation, for I was sick of life

t possible, there was plenty of gold on the ship, and every piece of it was good money. There had been searching for the ship, but none had found it; but he, Cassandro Biatt, had sure knowledge, got from an obi-man, of the place where it lay. It would not be an expensive business, but, cheap as it was, he had no means of raising cash for the purpose; while I could, no doubt, raise the needed mo

iatt the truth abou

plished liar, and a ma

I have never believed

reasure-ship was

of treasure-trove. We found it-that lost galleon; and we found the treasure-box of the captain's cabin. We found gold too; but the treasure-box was the chief thing; and we made

paid him well, for when the rent of the ship was met, and the few men on it paid-slaves they were chiefly-he pocketed ten thousand pounds, while Biatt and I each pouched forty thousand, and Michael two thousand. Aye,

ace, a pair of braggart adventurers, who had worked a master-man of the island for a ship, and money and men, and had lost all except the ship! Though to be sure, the money was not a big thing-a, few hundred pounds; but the ship was no flea-bit

as Cassandro Biatt. He took his jewels and vanished up the seas in a flouri

while I've enough. It's the men not going in tim

t was right, and went away content, while I stayed here- because I must-and bought the land and house where I have my great sugar-plantation. It is an enterprise of volume, and all would be well if I were normal in mind and body; but I am not. I have a past that stinks to h

in a republic like that where you live. Here men live according to the law of the knife, fork, and bottle, yet nowhere in the world is there deeper

eing used as guards at the entrance of King's House, and I have informed the chief justice of dismal facts which ought to have moved him. But what can you expect of a chief justice who need not be a lawyer, as this one is not, and has other means of earning income which, though not disloyal, are lowering to the status of a chief justice? And not the c

is open to all on the island who are respectable, I am treated with such disdain by the viceroy of the king that all the island is agog. I went one day to the king's ball the same as the rest of the worl

'S H

r 27th

'S B

e Lieutenant- Governor, on Tuesday evening,

ESTY'S

requested to order their carriages to come by t

ly be admitted in boots, or

eue, like a peasant. What is more, I danced with a negress in the great quadrille, and thereby offended the governor and his lady aunt, who pres

he tried to prohibit my leaving the island, through the withholding of a leave-ticket to me. His argument to the local authorities was that I had no rights, that I am a murderer and a mutineer,

. I shouldn't be able to pay my creditors in good gold Portuguese half-johannes and Spanish doubloons, and be free of Spanish silver, and give no heed to the

been jailed for killing your bad father! Aye, he was a bad man, and he is better in his grave than out of it, but it puts a gulf between

to his country-he was a traitor! I did not tell that story of his treachery in court-I did not tell it because of you. You did not deserve such infamy, a

o, no, my sweet lass, you are not married. But think-it is more than seven long years since we met on the hills above Playmore, and you put your han

ed husband. Therefore, the only way to do was as I did. I could not go where you were. There should be hid from you the fact that Erris Boyne was a traitor. This is your right, in my mind. Looking back, I feel sure I co

planter of Jamaica who has snatched from destiny a living and some riches. I have a bad name in the wo

ne-yes, obscene, for I permit my overseers and my manager to keep black women and have children by them. That I do not do so myself is no virtue on my part, but the virtue of a girl whom I knew in Connemara. I fill myself

amarind, papaw, guava, sweet-sop, star-apple, granadilla, hog-plum, Spanish-gooseberry, and pindal-nut. These are native, but there are also the orange, lemon, lime, shaddock, melon, fig, pomegranate, cinnamon, and mango, brought chiefly from the Spanish la

broke, but not on us. It fell on the middle of the prospect before us, and we saw beyond it the bright area of sunny country where men work and prophesy and slave, and pray to the ancient gods and acclaim the saints, and die and fructify the mould; where such as Christopher Dogan live, and men a thousand times lower than he. Christopher came to the jail the day I w

her one loves in the United States. Yes, dear Sheila, I love you, and I would tear out the heart of the world for you. I bathe my whole being in your beauty and your charm. I hunger for you-to stand beside you, t

t that yesterday's dissipation-yes, I was drunk yesternight, drunk in a new way. I was drunk with the thought of you, the lo

re I keep your letters and a sketch I made of you when we were young and glad-when I was young and glad. For I am an old man, Sheila, in all that makes men old. My step is quick still, my eye is sh

Perhaps it's because 'tis Christmas Day. I am not

at I am for the rest of my days, a planter denied the pleasure of home

minds. They are not like the people who knew me in Ireland-the governor here is one of them-and who believe the worst of me. The governor-faugh, he was made for bigger and better things! He is one of the best swordsmen in the world, and he is out against me here as if I was a

ingrooms and bedrooms open. It is commodious, and yet from a broad standpoint it is without style or distinction. It has none of those Corinthian pillars which your homesteads in America have. Yet there is in it a simple elegance. It has no car

of my cook and my housemaid, who have more joy in the language of the plantation than you cou

ter a fine, big hall, dark- you will understand that, though it is not so hot in Virginia, for the darkness makes for coolness. From the hall the bedrooms open all round. We are not so barbaric here as you might think, for my dining-room, which lies beyond the hall, with jalousies or movable blinds, exposed to all the winds, is comfortable, even ornate. There you

rs. The perfume of the flower is like an everlasting bud from the last tree of Time. See, my Sheila, your drunken, reckless lover pulls this sweet offering from his garden and offers it to you. He has no virtues; and yet he would have been a thousand times worse, if you had not come into his life. He had in him

es could give him even the appearance of honesty. And now he offers you what you cannot accept-can never accept-a love as deep as the

learned one thing, my friend 'one can get nearly everything with money. It is the hidden machinery which makes the world of success go round. With brains, you say? Yes, money and

l that men count of value in the world. I have an estate where I work like any youth who has everything before him. I have nothing before me, y

the towns that are a glory to this island, as Savanna la Mar was swept to oblivion in the year 1780 by a hurricane. You can still see the ruins of the town at the bottom of the sea-I have sailed over it in what is now the harbour, and there beneath, on the deep sands, lost to

to the sea and picked up and restored to life again, and to live for many years. Indeed, yes, it is so. His tombstone ma

and mutilated, as some do, I know not. Over against the southern shore in the parish of St. Elizabeth is an estate called Salem, owned, it is said, by an American, where the manager does such things. I am told that savageries are found there. There are too many abs

f African drums. I see yam-fed planters, on their horses, making for the burning, sandy streets of the capital. I see the Scots grass growing five and six feet high, food unsurpassed for horses-all the foliage too -beautiful tropical trees and shrubs, and here and there a huge breeding-farm. Yet I know that out beyond my sight there is the region known as Trelawney, and Trelawn

that a few determined men can demoralize a whole state, can fight and murder and fly to dark coverts in the tropical woods, whe

lass, powder-horn, haversack, sling, shot-gun, and pouch for ball. They dress as the country requires, and they are strong fighters against our soldiers who are burdened with heavy muskets, and who defy the climate, with their stuffed coats, their weighty caps, and their tight cross- belts. The Mar

unt the Maroons with the only weapon they really fear-the dog's sharp tooth. It may be the governor may intervene on the arrival of the dogs; but I have made friends with the provost-marshal-general and some members of th

n he would have me imprisoned here; that beat him in the matter of the ship for Haiti, and that will beat him on every hazard he sets, unless he stoops to underhand acts, which he will not do. That much must be said for him. He plays his part in no small way, and he is m

in hot haste, bearing a letter. He rides too hard. He has never carried himself easily in this climate. He treats it as if it was Ire