Part 23 (1/2)

”A Scoop!”

Stuart slept the clock round. It was evening again when he awoke. A wash to take the sleep out of his eyes, and down he went to see how big a dinner he could put away. But the doorman at the hotel, an East Indian, came forward to him with a telegram on a salver. The boy tore it open, and read:

”GOOD--STUFF--SEND--SOME MORE--FERGUS.”

And if Stuart had been offered the Governor Generals.h.i.+p of all the West Indian Islands put together, he could not have been more proud.

He spent the evening interviewing some of the pa.s.sengers who had come on the mail steamer the day before and who had stayed in Port of Spain and, before midnight, filed at the cable office a good ”second-day story.”

Remembering what his friend the reporter had told him, Stuart realized that though he was still sending this matter to Fergus, as it was straight news stuff, it probably was being handled by the Night Telegraph staff. That would not help to fill Fergus' columns in the Sunday issue, and the boy realized that, no matter what live day stuff he got hold of, he must not fall behind in his series of articles on the Color Question in the West Indies.

This question--which takes on the proportions of a problem in everyone of the West Indian Islands--was very different in Trinidad than in Barbados. The peoples and languages of Trinidad are strangely mixed.

Though it is an English colony, yet the language of the best families is Spanish, and the general language of the negro population is Creole French, a subvariant of that of Haiti. The boy found, too, on his first long walks in the neighborhood of Port-of-Spain, that there was a large outer settlement of East Indian coolies, and quite a number of Chinese.

The English, in Trinidad, were few in number.

In his quest for interviews about the hurricane, one of the chattiest of Stuart's informants had been a Mr. James, a resident of Barbados, but whose commercial interests were mainly in Trinidad. Since, then, this gentleman evidently knew the life in both islands, his comparisons would be of value, and the following day Stuart asked him for a second interview.

”I'm starting out to my place on the Nariva Cocal,” the planter replied, ”going in about an hour. Very glad to have you as my guest, if you wish, and the trip will give you a good view of the island. Then we can chat on the way.”

Stuart jumped at the opportunity. This was exactly what he was after, for the Nariva Cocal, with its thirteen-mile long coco-nut grove on the sh.o.r.e of the ocean, is famous. The boy knew, too, that this section was very difficult of access, the Nariva River forming a mixture of river, tidal creek, lagoon, mangrove swamp and marsh, hard to cross.

For some little distance out of Port-of-Spain the train pa.s.sed through true tropical forests of a verdure not to be outrivaled in any part of the New World. ”Here,” says Treves, ”is a very revel of green, a h.o.a.rd, a pyramid, a piled-up cairn of green, rising aloft from an iris-blue sea. Here are the dull green of wet moss, the clear green of the parrot's wing, the green tints of old copper, of malachite, of the wild apple, the bronze-green of the beetle's back, the dead green of the autumn Nile.” And these are expressed, not in plants, but in trees. The moss is waist-high, the ferns wave twenty feet overhead, the bamboo drapes a feathery fringe by every stream, the cocoa trees grow right up to the road or railroad which sweeps along as on an avenue between them, while at every crossing the white roadway is lined by the majestic sentinels of plantain, coco-nut palm and breadfruit tree.

Beyond St. Joseph, the ground became a low plain, level and monotonous, and given over to sugar-cane. Near d'Abadie, this crop gave place to cocoa, the staple of the center of the island, and this extended through Arima to Sangre Grande, the terminus of the railroad. During the trip Stuart's host had enlightened him by an exact and painstaking description of the growing of these various crops and the methods of their preparation for market.

At Sangre Grande, the railroad ended and a two-wheeled buggy was waiting. The planter ordered the East Indian driver to follow in the motor-bus which conveys pa.s.sengers to Manzanilla, and took the reins himself, so as to give a place to Stuart. The road had left the level, and pa.s.sed over low hills and valleys all given over to cocoa trees.

”See those bottles!” commented Mr. James, pointing to bottles daubed with paint, bunches of white feathers and similar objects hung on trees at various points of the road.

”Yes,” answered Stuart, ”what are they for?”

”Those are our police!” the planter explained. ”This colony is well governed, but planters have had a good deal of trouble keeping the negroes from stealing. We used to engage a number of watchmen, and the police force in this part of the island was increased. It didn't do any good, you know! Stealing went on just the same.

”So my partner, down here, went and got hold of the chief Obeah-man or witch-doctor of the island--paid him a good stiff price, too--and asked him to put a charm on the plantation. He did it, and those bottles and feathers are some of the charms. We pay for having them renewed every year. It costs a tidy bit, but less than the watchmen and police did.”

”And have the thefts stopped?”

”Absolutely. There hasn't been a s.h.i.+lling's worth of stuff touched since the obeah-man was here.”

”But obeah wouldn't have any effect on East Indian coolies,” objected Stuart.

”Coolies don't steal,” was the terse reply, ”those that are Mohammedans don't, any way. Trinidad negroes do. They're different from the Barbadian negroes, quite different. Obeah seems to be about the only thing they care about.”

”I ran up against some Obeah in Haiti,” remarked Stuart, ”though Voodoo is stronger there.”

”I never heard of much real Voodoo stuff here in the Windward Islands,”

the planter rejoined, ”but Obeah plays a big part in negro life. And, as I was just telling you, the whites aren't above using it, sometimes.”

”In Haiti,” responded Stuart, ”Father and I once found an Obeah sign in the road. Father, who knows a lot about those things, read it as a charm to prevent any white man going that way. I thought it was silly to pay any attention, but Father made a long detour around it. A week or so after I heard that a white trader had been driving along that road, and he drove right over the sign. Half a mile on, his horse took fright, threw him out of the buggy and he was killed.”