II.
… TWENTY minutes past five by the clock of the Bourse. The
hill shadows are shrinking back from the shore;—the long wharves
reach out yellow into the sun;—the tamarinds of the Place
Bertin, and the pharos for half its height, and the red-tiled
roofs along the bay are catching the glow. Then, over the light-house—on
the outermost line depending from the southern yard-
arm of the semaphore—a big black ball suddenly runs up like a
spider climbing its own thread. … Steamer from the South! The
packet has been sighted. And I have not yet been able to pack
away into a specially purchased wooden box all the fruits and
vegetable curiosities and odd little presents sent to me. If
Radice the boatman had not come to help me, I should never be
able to get ready; for the work of packing is being continually
interrupted by friends and acquaintances coming to say good-bye.
Manm-Robert brings to see me a pretty young girl—very fair, with
a violet foulard twisted about her blonde head. It is little
Basilique, who is going to make her pouémiè communion. So I kiss
her, according to the old colonial custom, once on each downy
cheek;—and she is to pray to Notre Dame du Bon Port that the
ship shall bear me safely to far-away New York.
And even then the steamer's cannon-call shakes over the town and
into the hills behind us, which answer with all the thunder of
their phantom artillery.
