Читать книгу Down Under with the Prince - Everard Cotes - Страница 4

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Gloom was cast over the Renown, the day before reaching Barbados, by the falling overboard, in rough weather, of a fine young gunner of marines, who was sitting on the taffrail gaily talking to his mates when a roll came that sent him into the sea. The poor fellow had hardly stopped falling when patent life-buoys, which sent out white clouds of smoke, easily visible in the bright afternoon sunshine, were dropped. The big ship swung round. The man was swimming, when lost to view amongst white-topped waves. A boat was smartly lowered, and within fifteen minutes of the cry "Man overboard," the rowers had reached the buoys and were carefully searching the precise spot where the speck which had been one of our company had disappeared. The Prince was much concerned at the accident, and came upon deck the moment he heard of it. But our hearts grew heavy as the minutes went by and the search proved vain. It had eventually to be recognized that the unfortunate man had sunk before reaching the life-buoys, close as they had been dropped to him in the water. A funeral service was afterwards held on the forecastle, the entire ship's company and all the officers attending to pay respect to the memory of their shipmate. The Prince also sent a personal message by wireless to the relations of the deceased. It was one of those accidents that no amount of care can entirely prevent, upon the necessarily low, and but slightly fenced decks of a modern battle-cruiser in a heavy sea.

The following evening the Renown arrived off Barbados. The light-cruiser Calcutta, flagship of the West Indian squadron, met her at sea and escorted her in to the anchorage half a mile from shore. A dozen sailing barques, mostly American, also three or four steamers of various nationalities, were lying at anchor, all of them decked with bunting in honour of the Royal visit. The usual salutes were fired and formal exchange of calls between the Prince and Sir Charles O'Brien, Governor of the island, and Admiral Everett, commanding the West Indian station, took place.

It was the first pause for the purpose of the tour, the first official touch. The feeling of function, of standing at attention, which was soon to clothe the enterprise as with a garment, fell upon all concerned. The silk hat for the first time bobbed in the visiting steam-launch, and the address came out of the breast pocket of the municipal morning coat.

Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados, as seen from the Renown through the soft warm muggy atmosphere of the end of March, was a tumbled mass of white and red buildings embowered in emerald foliage, and fringed by the masts of anchored sailing vessels, themselves reflected in the broken amethyst of the open roadstead. The narrow streets had been decorated by the wives and daughters of the residents, headed by Lady Carter, wife of a late governor of the island, who had expended an immense amount of labour upon the work. Gigantic sago-palm leaves had grown into royal emblems wherein the fronds took the place of feathers. The Broad Street of the city might have been a Cantonese bazaar, so thick was it with coloured banners. Nelson's statue, in the local Trafalgar Square, looked out of a mass of brilliant floral designs. An imposing triumphal arch of flowers had also been erected. Even the tiny wooden huts of the negroes, on the outskirts, carried paper decorations that must have cost much labour to make. A well-set-up company of volunteers furnished a guard-of-honour at the landing. The members of the Barbados House of Assembly, headed by the Governor in white political uniform, received the Prince. Bands and salutes added to the formality of the occasion. Complimentary addresses were presented in the old Assembly House, where the Prince shook hands with a remarkably long line of returned military and naval officers and men, for Barbados sent an extraordinary large proportion of her sons to the war.

A fleet of motor-cars then turned up and the Prince was taken for a drive through the island. The procession was headed by that veteran planter and member of Assembly, Mr. Graham Yearwood, who seemed to have at his finger-ends every local romance of the past three hundred years, from the story of the "Rendezvous" on the coast, where loyalist planters repelled the onslaught of Cromwellian squadrons, to that of a certain cavernous gully which we also saw, where, for long months, was hidden the body of a swashbuckling moss-trooper slain in single combat by a Barbadian planter. The Prince was also conducted over the buzzing machinery of an immense, up-to-date sugar-factory, fitted with the latest appliances, and learnt something of the vicissitudes of the sugar industry, an enterprise which was doggedly operated through years of low prices, bad crops, and hurricanes, and only narrowly saved from complete bankruptcy by a grant obtained from the British Parliament by Mr. Joseph Chamberlain. At the time of the Royal visit, it was in a state of abounding prosperity with prices at twelve times their pre-war level. Even with the year's by no means favourable season the current crop was valued at eight times the average of five years previously, which meant ease and comfort to all connected with this premier industry of the island.

The whole of the city portion of the route was lined—in places ten deep—with cheering, laughing, bowing coloured people and their women and piccaninnies; the folk of the cane fields and factories. In the country portion of the route, negroes rushed to the roadside from their work in the fields the moment the Royal car appeared in sight. "God bless you!" they cried to the Prince. "Come! Come! Lookee here, he too sweet boy!" "God bless my old eyes that have seen him," mingled with laughter and the clapping of hands, while old men bowed low, with dignified, wide-armed, slow gesticulation, and women and girls, sometimes smartly got-up with head-kerchiefs made of Union Jacks, and always with strong, free hip-gait, and the widest of white-toothed smiles, came running to drop a curtsy or bend in salute. It was real contagious joy and excitement, like the overflowing froth of a bottle of Guinness, and as for the noise only a Jazz Band could describe it.

The road was sometimes crowded with four-wheeled mule-drawn carts, piled high with fresh-cut, yellow sugar-cane, on its way to the presses, each stem the thickness of a rolling-pin and the length of a cavalryman's lance, for the harvesting was in full swing. The negroes take the crop, which looks much like sorghum or Indian corn, with cutlasses, primitive work done by primitive people. The luscious growth needs a good deal of fertilizing and care the year round, and generations of these simple folk have thriven upon it since the middle of the seventeenth century. Seventy-four thousand acres of it there are and probably a hundred thousand negroes producing it, all, so far as we could observe, delighted to see the Prince of Wales.

The road wound sometimes through pillared aisles of stately sago-palms, past dense groves of green mahogany and bread-fruit trees or brilliantly red flowering devil-trees, hibiscus, and silk-cotton. Sometimes one saw brown heaps of sweet potatoes, as large as turnips, just dug from the earth. The procession climbed through open fields of uncut sugar-cane and sorghum, getting a fine view of rolling cultivation, bordered with blue sea and white surf-swept beach. Ancient windmills swung black, droning sails on the hill-tops. Tall brick chimneys told of long-established crushing mills close to the cane fields. Cheerful villages of flimsy wooden shacks and solid stone houses followed one another in quick succession, each with its inhabitants lined up in holiday clothes to cheer. Again and again the Prince alighted to inspect boy-scouts, girl-guides, and war-workers, or to say a pleasant word to assemblies of school-children. One gathering proved a community of "Red-legs," descendants, now of mixed race, of Scotch and Irish prisoners of war and "unruly men" exiled and sold for seven years as white servants to the colony in 1653. It was easy to pick out in the white-clad crowd individuals with negro features and pale Celtic skins.

Later in the day, the Prince attended a formal state dinner, and evoked a storm of applause by contradicting emphatically a rumour, which had been causing a good deal of anxiety in the island, to the effect that there was a possibility of some of the West Indies being disposed of to America. "I need hardly say," said His Royal Highness, downrightly, "that the King's subjects are not for sale to other governments. Their destiny, as free men, is in their own hands. Your future is for you yourselves to shape, and I am sure Barbados will never waver in its loyalty, three centuries old, to the British Crown."

It would thus appear that Cromwell's experiment is not likely to be developed by the present government. The assurance was noteworthy as the first of the pleasant and telling things the Prince had to say during his progress, opportunities which he never missed and which, in the aggregate, enhanced so greatly the success of his mission.