“We are your grateful guests,” said Dr. Ulswater, elaborately.
When we came to go, the sulky negro and his boat had disappeared. Captain Jansen offered to take us ashore. Dr. Ulswater bundled up his cuttlefish. Mrs. Mink said, “He's dreadfully untidy.”
“Admirable!” cried Dr. Ulswater again. “It's a select word, a creative description! He's a regular litter. His very vital point is loose.”
“What personality!” muttered Dr. Ulswater. “What point of view! Untidy! The very word! She buys a steam yacht, furnishes it in the style of Potterville, Ohio, and starts off to examine Foreign Missions. Why, sure! That's easy!”
Captain Jansen chuckled: “I see men try sheet her more'n once, but they don't. She have a head.”
“Untidy!” muttered Dr. Ulswater. “Untidy!”--as if he foreboded trouble in that word.
|WE left Nassau the following morning. On the third day we passed the Inaguas and sighted Tortuga. They were days rich with the tropical outpourings of Dr. Ulswater, into whose warm Gulf Stream of conversation Mrs. Mink now and then dropped cool comments and punctuations that excited his luxuriant praise. What Mrs. Mink thought of Dr. Ulswater was not so clear.
The green cliffs of Haiti overhung a white surf, and the lapping mouths of half-submerged caves below; above was the tangle of the forest, great pendant leaves, sweeping and coiling creepers. It was the hot morning of the fourth day. There was a thin, shining mist about, and Dr. Ulswater quoted:
“Vaporous amethyst!” he murmured, sentimentally. “Gaseous spirit of jewel! Ah, Mrs. Mink! Lyric poetry, is it not a religion?”
“You see a distinction. You are right. You would say, in the worship of beauty the ethical element is too subsidiary. You would point out the lack of rigidity and purpose.”
Mrs. Mink did not commit herself. We watched the smoke of a steamer coming toward us from the east.
“I see the deep's untrampled floor!” murmured Dr. Ulswater.
The steamer, a dilapidated side-wheeler, drew nearer, and a small cannon was plainly to be seen in the prow, but the only men in sight were a negro at the wheel and another walking the bridge. As they came within hailing, the cannon went off suddenly, the ball boomed overhead, and struck, spat! against the cliff, and on the deck a crowd of negroes sprang up and fell to dancing, howling, waving their guns. Mrs. Mink said, “For goodness' sake!” while Dr. Ulswater and I went to join Captain Jansen.