On the afternoon of the following day a wharf at the eastern section of the city was thronged with people, chiefly black and brown. Scores of cabs were drawn up at both sides of the entrance to the wharf, and any number of porters were conveying trunks on their heads to the ship which lay anchored alongside of the pier. Steam was up; a donkey engine rattled and clattered as the sailors lowered some packages into the vessel’s hold; the captain stood on the bridge shouting out his commands with a fine sense of ultimate authority; the passengers streamed up the gangway, while their friends and relatives who had come to see them off stood on the pier and looked with envy and admiration at those who were about to brave the perils of the deep.
It was a scene characteristically West Indian. The long wooden pier crowded with a jabbering, multi-coloured throng, the mountains of coal from which fine particles of coal-dust came flying as the sea breeze swept over the wharf; the noise, the confusion, the total lack of all appearance of order—though order of a kind was certainly maintained—the dark faces, eager or tearful; the ragged porters who balanced on their heads packages weighing over a hundred pounds each as though they were feather pillows; the few white men moving perfectly at ease amongst the excited people; the brilliant sunlight, the great arch of dazzling sky, the gently-heaving green-tinted water, the crowds of boys, who, simply clad in a short pair of breeches, swam and dived like fishes in the sea, shaking their heads as they rose to the surface, and showing their strong white teeth as they laughed and shouted to the people on the ship—all this was typical of a British West Indian island on a day when a vessel leaves the port.
To Susan and Jones it was not strange, and the noise could not possibly confuse them. They pushed their way through the crowd, followed by Mr. Proudleigh, his wife, Miss Proudleigh, and Susan’s sisters; but at the gangway they were stopped by one of the Steamship Company’s officials, who firmly told them that only passengers were allowed to go on board. Here they separated. Susan kissed all her folk, Jones shook hands with them, and then the two climbed up the gangway, and Susan found herself at last on the deck of the steamer which was to take her to a strange and distant land.
For the first time doubts assailed her. For the first time she realized fully that she was leaving her home, perhaps for good; and as she looked from the deck down upon her people a lump gathered to her throat and she began to wonder if she were altogether wise. Yet she would not have given up her purpose for a moment. She was too deeply bitten by the prevailing desire to go somewhere.
She leaned against the vessel’s rail, now and then exchanging a word at the top of her voice with Catherine or her father. Jones was as gay as ever, and was loudly explaining to some of his friends on the pier that he would have travelled first-class had he not been taking a female with him. He was in the condition locally known as “merry” (this term indicating generally a half-way stage between soberness and intoxication), and seemed to entertain a cheerful expectation of being shot immediately after arrival in Colon; but Susan saw nothing exhilarating in such a prospect, and more than once suggested to him that he should stop talking nonsense.
She was to travel second-class; but for the present she remained standing amongst the deck-passengers. There were over a hundred of these, and the deck on which they were gathered was littered with boxes and trunks containing their clothes, and with the deck-chairs on which they would sit during the day and sleep at night. It seemed a strange scene to Susan’s wondering eyes. The beat of the engines stunned her, the smells nauseated her, she was conscious of a throbbing in her head. Suddenly it seemed to her as though the pier and the people on it were moving backwards. She heard a great shout of “Good-bye!” She saw a great waving of hands. They were going, going, and now she broke down and began to cry outright.
“Look after the shop good, Kate!” she called out to her sister; and “Good-bye, mammee—good-bye, papee! good-bye!”
Her mother waved in reply, two big tears stealing down her withered cheeks. Her father, though much comforted by the reflection that the shop had been left to the family as a source of revenue, yet felt sad. But he waved his hat and shouted, “Take care of you’self, Susan, an’ write to me!” and continued waving his hat long after there was any possibility of its being seen by her. Then, when the crowd on the pier had become an indistinct mass, Susan went to the second-class passengers’ deck and began to wonder once more what sort of life awaited her in Colon. . . .
Steadily Kingston dwindled into a collection of white houses nestling amidst a forest of trees and backed by a noble range of smoke-blue mountains. And as the ship steamed through the narrow channel that forms the entrance to the city’s harbour, the shrill voice of a woman rose in a quavering chant, and soon all the deckers were singing the words of some plaintive hymn.
It was their way of bidding farewell to Jamaica.
Thus singing, they left the land behind.
“Susan! get up! This is not a time to sleep.”
Susan, who had been sleeping but fitfully, awoke at once with a start. Jones was rapping loudly at her cabin door. Something in his voice startled her.
“What is it?” she asked, frightened.
“The comet! It’s the first time I see it.”
Susan dressed in a minute; she hurried out of the cabin and went to the well-deck with Jones.
It was about four o’clock in the morning, but there was as yet no sign of the coming day. A crescent moon was glowing above, but the light of it paled into insignificance before the radiant splendour of the morning star. There in the East hung Venus, like a great lamp illumining all heaven and earth, a diamond set against a magnificent background of millions and millions of stars. These indeed were strewn almost as thickly in the sky as sand in a desert; look where you would, you saw them, some faint, some bright, and some like silver dust scattered profusely about the lofty silent dome that overarched and covered the wide circle of the sea. The gleaming planet a............