CHAPTER X.
THE QUEEN ON THE DOOR-STEP.
We found that Corny had not been mistaken about her influence over herfamily, for the next morning, before we were done breakfast, Mr.Chipperton came around to see us. He was full of Nassau, and had made uphis mind to go with us on Tuesday. He asked us lots of questions, but hereally knew as much about the place as we did, although he had been somuch in the habit of mixing his Bahamas and his Bermudas.
"My wife is very much pleased at the idea of having you two with us onthe trip over," said he; "although, to be sure, we may have a verysmooth and comfortable voyage."
I believe that, since the Silver Spring affair, he regarded Rectus andme as something in the nature of patent girl-catchers, to be hung overthe side of the vessel in bad weather.
We were sorry to leave St. Augustine, but we had thoroughly done up theold place, and had seen everything, I think, except the Spring of Poncede Leon, on the other side of the St. Sebastian River. We didn't careabout renewing our youth,--indeed, we should have objected very much toanything of the kind,--and so we felt no interest in old Ponce's spring.
On Tuesday morning, the "Tigris" made her appearance on time, and Mr.Cholott and our good landlady came down to see us off. The yellow-leggedparty also came down, but not to see us off. They, too, were going toNassau.
Rectus had gone on board, and I was just about to follow him, when ourold Minorcan stepped up to me.
"Goin' away?" said he.
"Yes," said I, "we're off at last."
"Other feller goin'?"
"Oh, yes," I answered, "we keep together."
"Well now, look here," said he, drawing me a little on one side. "Whatmade him take sich stock in us Minorcans? Why, he thought we used to beslaves; what put that in his head, I'd like to know? Did he reely thinkwe ever was niggers?"
"Oh, no!" I exclaimed. "He had merely heard the early history of theMinorcans in this country, their troubles and all that, and he----"
"But what difference did it make to him?" interrupted the old man.
I couldn't just then explain the peculiarities of Rectus's dispositionto Mr. Menendez, and so I answered that I supposed it was a sort ofsympathy.
"I can't see, for the life of me," said the old man, reflectively, "whatdifference it made to him."
And he shook hands with me, and bade me good-bye. I don't believe he hasever found anybody who could give him the answer to this puzzle.
The trip over to Nassau was a very different thing from our voyage downthe coast from New York to Savannah. The sea was comparatively smooth,and, although the vessel rolled a good deal in the great swells, we didnot mind it much. The air was delightful, and after we had gone down theFlorida coast, and had turned to cross the Gulf Stream to our islands,the weather became positively warm, even out here on the sea, and wewere on deck nearly all the time.
Mr. Chipperton was in high spirits. He enjoyed the deep blue color ofthe sea; he went into ecstasies over the beautiful little nautilusesthat sailed along by the ship; he watched with wild delight theporpoises that followed close by our side, and fairly shouted when a bigfellow would spring into the air, or shoot along just under the surface,as if he had a steam-engine in his tail. But when he saw a school offlying-fish rise up out of the sea, just a little ahead of us, and goskimming along like birds, and then drop again into the water, he was sosurprised and delighted that he scarcely knew how to express hisfeelings.
Of course, we younger people enjoyed all these things, but I wassurprised to see that Corny was more quiet than usual, and spent a gooddeal of her time in reading, although she would spring up and run to therailing whenever her father announced some wonderful discovery. Mr.Chipperton would have been a splendid man for Columbus to have takenalong with him on his first trip to these islands. He would have kept upthe spirits of the sailors.
I asked Corny what she was reading, and she showed me her book. It was abig, fat pamphlet about the Bahamas, and she was studying up for herstay there. She was a queer girl. She had not been to school very much,her mother said, for they had been travelling about a good deal of lateyears; but she liked to study up special things, in which she took aninterest. Sometimes she was her own teacher, and sometimes, if theystaid in any one place long enough, she took regular lessons.
"I teach her as much as I can," said her mother, "although I would muchrather have her go regularly to school. But her father is so fond of herthat he will not have her away from him, and as Mr. Chipperton's lungrequires him to be moving from place to place, we have to go, too. But Iam determined that she shall go to a school next fall."
"What is the matter with Mr. Chipperton's lung?" I asked.
"I wish we knew," said Mrs. Chipperton, earnestly. "The doctors don'tseem to be able to find out the exact trouble, and besides, it isn'tcertain which lung it is. But the only thing that can be done for it isto travel."
"He looks very well," said I.
"Oh, yes!" said she. "But"--and she looked around to see where hewas--"he doesn't like people to tell him so."
After a while, Rectus got interested in Corny's book, and the two read agood deal together. I did not interrupt them, for I felt quite sure thatneither of them knew too much.
The captain and all the officers on the steamer were good, sociable men,and made the passengers feel at home. I had got somewhat acquainted withthem on our trip from Savannah to St. Augustine, and now the captain letme come into his room and showed me the ship's course, marked out on achart, and pointed out just where we were, besides telling me a goodmany things about the islands and these waters.
I mentioned to Corny and Rectus, when I went aft again,--this was thesecond day out,--that we should see one end of the Great Bahama early inthe afternoon.
"I'm glad of that," said Corny; "but I suppose we sha'n't go near enoughfor us to see its calcareous formation."
"Its what?" I exclaimed.
"Its cal-car-e-ous formation," repeated Corny, and she went on with herreading.
"Oh!" said I, laughing, "I guess the calcareous part is all covered upwith grass and plants,--at least it ought to be in a semi-tropicalcountry. But when we get to Nassau you can dig down and see what it'slike."
"Semi-tropical!" exclaimed Mr. Chipperton, who just came up; "there issomething about that word that puts me all in a glow," and he rubbed hishands as if he smelt dinner.
Each of us wore a gray bean. Rectus and I had ours fastened to ourwatch-guards, and Corny's hung to a string of beads she generally wore.We formed ourselves into a society--Corny suggested it--which we calledthe "Association of the Three Gray Beans," the object of which was tosave each other from drowning, and to perform similar serviceable acts,if circumstances should call for them. We agreed to be very faithful,and, if Corny had tumbled overboard, I am sure that Rectus and I wouldhave jumped in after her; but I am happy to say that she did nothing ofthe kind on this trip.
Early the next morning, we reached Nassau, the largest town in theBahamas, on one of the smallest islands, and found it semi-tropicalenough to suit even Mr. Chipperton.
Before we landed, we could see the white, shining streets andhouses,--just as calcareous as they could be; the black negroes; thepea-green water in the harbor; the tall cocoa-nut trees, and about fivemillion conch-shells, lying at the edges of the docks. The coloredpeople here live pretty much on the conch-fish, and when we heard that,it accounted for the shells. The poorer people on these islands often goby the name of "conchs."
As we went up through the town we found that the darkeys were nearly asthick as the conch-shells, but they were much more lively. I never sawsuch jolly, dont-care-y people as the colored folks that were scatteredabout everywhere. Some of the young ones, as joyful skippers, could havetired out a shrimp.
There is one big hotel in the town, and pretty nearly all our passengerswent there. The house is calcareous, and as solid as a rock. Rectus andI liked it very much, because it reminded us of pictures we had seen ofAlgiers, or Portugal, or som
e country where they have arches instead ofdoors; but Mr. Chipperton wasn't at all satisfied when he found thatthere was not a fireplace in the whole house.
"This is coming the semi-tropical a little too strong," he said to me;but he soon found, I think, that gathering around the hearth-stone couldnever become a popular amusement in this warm little town.
Every day, for a week, Mr. Chipperton hired a one-horse barouche, and heand his wife and daughter rode over the island. Rectus and I walked, andwe saw a good deal more than they did. Corny told us this, the firstwalk she took with us. We went down a long, smooth, white road that ledbetween the queer little cottages of the negroes, where the cocoa-nutand orange trees and the bananas and sappadilloes, and lots of othertrees and bushes stood up around the houses just as proudly as if theywere growing on ten-thousand-dollar lots. Some of these trees had themost calcareous foundations anybody ever saw. They grew almost out ofthe solid rock. This is probably one of the most economical places inthe world for garden mould. You couldn't sweep up more than a bucketfulout of a whole garden, and yet the things grow splendidly. Rectus saidhe supposed the air was earthy.
Corny enjoyed this walk, because we went right into the houses andtalked to the people, and bought cocoa-nuts off the trees, and ate theinside custard with a spoon, and made the little codgers race forpennies, and tried all the different kinds of fruits. She said she wouldlike to walk out with us always, but her mother said she must not begoing about too much with boys.
"But there are no girls on the island," said she; "at least, no whiteones,--as far as I have seen."
I suppose there were white children around, but they escaped notice inthe vast majority of little nigs.
The day after this walk, the shorter "yellow-legs" asked me to go outfishing with him. He couldn't find anybody else, I suppose, for hisfriend didn't like fishing. Neither did Rectus; and so we went offtogether in a fishing-smack, with a fisherman to sail the boat andhammer conch for bait. We went outside of Hog Island,--which lies offNassau, very much as Anastasia Island lies off St. Augustine, only itisn't a quarter as big,--and fished in the open sea. We caught a lot ofcurious fish, and the yellow-legs, whose name was Burgan, turned out tobe a very good sort of a fellow. I shouldn't have supposed this of a manwho had made such a guy of himself; but there are a great many differentkinds of outsides to people.
When we got back to the hotel, along came Rectus and Corny. They hadbeen out walking together, and looked hot.
"Oh," cried Corny, as soon as she saw me. "We have something to talk toyou about! Let's go and sit down. I wish there was some kind of anumbrella or straw hat that people could wear under their chins to keepthe glare of these white roads out of their eyes. Let's go up into thesilk-cotton tree."
I proposed that I should go to my room and clean up a little first, butCorny couldn't wait. As her father had said, she wasn't good at waiting;and so we all went up into the silk-cotton tree. This was an enormoustree, with roots like the partitions between horse-stalls; it stood atthe bottom of the hotel grounds, and had a large platform built up amongthe branches, with a flight of steps leading to it. There were seats uphere, and room enough for a dozen people.
"Well," said I, when we were seated, "what have you to tell? Anythingwonderful? If it isn't, you'd better let me tell you about my fish."
"Fish!" exclaimed Rectus, not very respectfully.
"Fish, indeed!" said Corny. "_We_ have seen a _queen_!"
"Queen of what?" said I.
"Queen of Africa," replied Corny. "At least a part of it,--she would be,I mean, if she had stayed there. We went over that way, out to the veryedge of the town, and there we found a whole colony of real nativeAfricans,--just the kind Livingstone and Stanley discovered,--only theywear clothes like us."
"Oh, my!" exclaimed Rectus.
"I don't mean exactly that," said Corny; "but coats and trousers andfrocks, awfully old and patched. And nearly all the grown-up peoplethere were born in Africa, and rescued by an English man-of-war from aslave-ship that was taking them into slavery, and were brought here andset free. And here they are, and they talk their own language,--onlysome of them know English, for they've been here over thirty years,--andthey all keep together, and have a governor of their own, with aflag-pole before his house, and among them is a real queen, of royalblood!"
"How did you find out that?" I asked.
"Oh, we heard about the African settlement this morning, at the hotel,and we went down there, right after dinner. We went into two or three ofthe houses and talked to the people, and they all told us the samething, and one woman took us to see the queen."
"In her palace?" said I.
"No," said Corny, "she don't live in a palace. She lives in one of thefunniest little huts you ever saw, with only two rooms. And it's toobad; they all know she's a queen, and yet they don't pay her one bit ofhonor. The African governor knows it, but he lives in his house with hisflag-pole in front of it, and rules her people, while she sits on astone in front of her door and sells red peppers and bits ofsugar-cane."
"Shameful!" said I; "you don't mean that?"
"Yes, she does," put in Rectus. "We saw her, and bought some sugar-cane.She didn't think we knew her rank, for she put her things away when thewomen told her, in African, why we came to see her."
"What did she say to you?" I asked, beginning to be a good dealinterested in this royal colored person.
"Nothing at all," said Corny; "she can't talk a word of English. If shecould, she might get along better. I suppose her people want somebodyover them who can talk English. And so they've just left her to sellpeppers, and get along as well as she can."
"It's a good deal of a come-down, I must say," said I. "I wonder how shelikes it?"
"Judging from her looks," said Rectus, "I don't believe she likes it atall."
"No, indeed!" added Corny. "She looks woe-begone, and I don't see whyshe shouldn't. To be taken captive with her people--may be she wastrying to save them--and then to have them almost cut her acquaintanceafter they all get rescued and settled down!"
"Perhaps," said I, "as they are all living under Queen Victoria, theydon't want any other queen."
"That's nothing," said Corny, quickly. "There's a governor of this wholeisland, and what do they want with another governor? If Queen Victoriaand the governor of this island were Africans, of course they wouldn'twant anybody else. But as it is, they do, don't you see?"
"They don't appear to want another queen," I said, "for they wont takeone that is right under their noses."
Corny looked provoked, and Rectus asked me how I knew that.
"I tell you," said Corny, "it don't make any difference whether theywant her or not, they haven't any right to make a born queen sit on astone and sell red-peppers. Do you know what Rectus and I have made upour minds to do?"
"What is it?" I asked.
Corny looked around to see that no one was standing or walking near thetree, and then she leaned toward me and said:
"We are going to seat her on her throne!"
"You?" I exclaimed, and began to laugh.
"Yes, we are," said Rectus; "at least, we're going to try to."
"You needn't laugh," said Corny. "You're to join."
"In an insurrection,--a conspiracy," said I. "I can't go into thatbusiness."
"You must!" cried Corny and Rectus, almost in a breath.
"You've made a promise," said Corny.
"And are bound to stick to it," said Rectus, looking at Corny.
Then, both together, as if they had settled it all beforehand, they heldup their gray sea-beans, and said, in vigorous tones:
"Obey the bean!"
I didn't hesitate a moment. I held up my bean, and we clicked beans allaround.
I became a conspirator!