be got till late in the afternoon, when (amid shaking of hands and
waving of handkerchiefs, as hearty as if we the 'Island-bound,' and
they the 'Gulf-bound,' and the officers of the Shannon had known
each other fourteen years instead of fourteen days) we steamed out,
past the Little Saba rock, which was said (but it seems incorrectly)
to have burst into smoke and flame during the earthquake, and then
away to the south and east for the Islands: having had our first
taste, but, thank God, not our last, of the joys of the 'Earthly
Paradise.'



CHAPTER II: DOWN THE ISLANDS



I had heard and read much, from boyhood, about these 'Lesser
Antilles.' I had pictured them to myself a thousand times: but I
was altogether unprepared for their beauty and grandeur. For
hundreds of miles, day after day, the steamer carried us past a
shifting diorama of scenery, which may be likened to Vesuvius and
the Bay of Naples, repeated again and again, with every possible
variation of the same type of delicate loveliness.

Under a cloudless sky, upon a sea, lively yet not unpleasantly
rough, we thrashed and leaped along. Ahead of us, one after
another, rose high on the southern horizon banks of gray cloud, from
under each of which, as we neared it, descended the shoulder of a
mighty mountain, dim and gray. Nearer still the gray changed to
purple; lowlands rose out of the sea, sloping upwards with those