The third engineer was acquiring no mean name as a cutter of hair, and I felt the cold after I had been to his open-air chair, near the engine-room staircase. While I sat to him, a characteristic of the mess-room boy was borne on the air from the chief's room. It was his habit of replying hastily to any observation, "Yes, yes," and this time the chief's voice was heard: "Curse you, John, for a blasted nuisance." "Yes, yes, sir."
As the sun was stooping under the sea once more, land grew into sight far ahead; mountain or cloud? The mountainous coast was mocked indeed by great continents of cloud above, of its own grey hue. The wind blew hard, but at ten o'clock we were running in under the rocky pinnacles of Saint Vincent, against the blustering wind and the black racing sea. A light or two, chiefly from other steamers, told something of the port. The crescent moon, cloaked in a circling golden mist, was now near setting. We anchored and spent the night in quiet.
A mile or so from our anchorage, in the morning's clear air, huddled the pink unsightly little town. At distance the heights of rock looked as unsubstantial as Prospero's magic; the clouds that swam over them and across their steeps might have been solid, so phantasmal were those rocks. Not so with the stony masses overpeering the town; those in their iron-brown nakedness had the aspect of eternal immobility. The air was cold and lucent; the water halcyon blue. Several tramps with rusty black and red, and a sailing ship or two, lay around the _Bonadventure_; barges of a rough old make clustered closer in to shore.
The invasion by natives began early. A dozen boats were tossing on the waves alongside, with woolly heads and upward eyes seeking what or whom they might devour, and quiet-footed rogues here and there on the decks were trying to sell matches, cigarettes, and red bead handbags. To their attempts, the politest answer was "No good." "No caree?" Nobody seemed to care. Some of our firemen whose homes were here had gone ashore, with the air of men allowing their old haunts to share their glory.
Two lighters, coppered below, bearded with dark green weed, blundered alongside with bags of coal, and soon the gangs, a grimy and ragged collection, were getting the bags aboard, and the winch grumbling away. Yet it was now made known that we were not to pick up much coal here, but to proceed to Las Palmas for the bulk of our wants. This was unfortunate for the firemen who had gone home. All too soon the blue peter at half-mast and the blowing of the hooter recalled them.