The coral reefs waiting to rip out a ship's bottom, but swarming with fish so gaily coloured in such strange patterns they might have been created by an inspired artist in the last stages of a drunken frenzy. Long sandy beaches backed by many types of palm trees.
And at the back of the beaches, neat holes, the homes of land crabs which the natives caught at night, luring them with flaming torches.
Everywhere among the islands mosquitoes, whining and biting, leaving smudges of blood when you slapped them on your flesh. In the rainy season they were reinforced by sand-flies, almost too small to see but which waited for the sun to dip towards the horizon before emerging to bite with the sharpness of needles, leaving angry, itching weals.
Shiny black scorpions, smaller than one had expected. Centipedes, lurking under stones and twigs, or hiding in the beams of a roof or ceiling and dropping on your arm to give you a bite which swelled like a Scotsman's haggis.
Long-tailed, impertinent blackbirds, bigger than those in Europe, strutting around like young midshipmen on a flagship's quarterdeck, lacking only a telescope tucked under a wing.
Clothing mildewed, rotted and decayed; iron rusted and flaked until nothing was left but a dull red stain. Nothing moved, yet nothing stood still. Like jagged rocks in a pool, the Windward Islands stood four-square at the southern end of the Caribbean. On them men built houses and hurricanes blew them down. Coral reefs grew, then the coral died and the seas smashed it, hurling the pieces upon the beach where, along with sea shells, the waves pounded and ground it into gleaming sand.
In the jungles trees died and fell to give life to termites; animals died, but their bodies gave life to beetles and maggots; sailors died—and, Ramage thought bitterly, gave life to clerks rilling in forms at the Navy Board.
Southwick came up from below, where he had been working out his noon sight and, squinting in the bright sunlight, reported: 'We should sight Ragged Point before noon tomorrow, if this wind holds.'
'How much before noon?'
'Between ten and noon.'
'Hmm...'
Knowing the captain was thinking of the risk of running on to the island in the darkness, Southwick said: 'I don't think we need heave-to tonight, sir. I'm reasonably certain, and there's been no north-going current for the past five days.'
Every captain—and master too—making the Atlantic crossing had one fear about making his landfalclass="underline" that he'd be a few miles ahead of his reckoning so that in the darkness the ship would run up on the low-lying, rocky and wave-beaten east coast of Barbados. If you were too far north or south you could pass it in the night and, if to the south, run on to the rocks (some forty feet high and barely twenty wide) and tiny islands of the Grenadines beyond.
Well, Ramage knew Southwick was a good navigator but at this stage in the voyage all captains and all masters tried to outdo each other in showing confidence, yet most of them —the conscientious ones, anyway—always had a nagging doubt.
An error in me quadrant, in the chronometer, an unexpected current during the night between sights... All could land you on the beach at Barbados, where even in a calm day the swell waves thundered their way through outlying reefs and sent a fine spray drifting inland for several hundred yards, an almost invisible mist.
The lighthouse—one could never trust that a light had been lit; and even then couldn't be sure it wasn't put up by a wrecker in a position where it'd lead you on to rocks. More fortunes than anyone liked to admit had been made by wreckers in these islands; in Barbados alone two or three of the leading families were reputed to have a hand in it.
Soon after dawn next morning it seemed to Ramage every man in the ship was rubbing, scrubbing, polishing or painting. His own steward could hardly wait to get him out of the cabin to start pressing clothes which, for the previous three or four days had been hung up to air.
Seamen were busy with cloths and brickdust, rubbing vigorously to give all the brasswork an extra shine. The decks had already been holystoned and washed down.
The gunner's mate and a couple of men were methodically wiping over each carronade with oily cloths. Two days ago they'd gone round with a bucket of blacking—a mysterious mixture of vinegar and lamp black—painting it on spots where rust marks had been removed, and repainting all the shot in the racks.
There was still a strong smell about the ship: for the past two days the men had been painting the standing rigging with a mixture of Stockholm tar, coal tar and salt water which had been heated up in a fish kettle (and as they wielded their brushes Southwick danced around below, cursing them for spilling drops, despite the old awnings spread over the deck which had been liberally sprinkled with sand as an added precaution).
At the bow three men were putting the finishing touches to the Triton's figurehead. The wooden replica of the son of Poseidon and Amphitrite was small and well-carved and his head was bent forward slightly, as if supporting the bowsprit. His fish's tail twisted down the stem and the outline of each scale was picked out in gold leaf. The face was—as Southwick commented many weeks ago—friendly enough for one o' those Greek chaps' but the triton shell which by tradition he held in his hand had been broken off at some time and replaced with one carved from green wood which the hot sun had now split.
And it was going to cost Ramage a guinea before long (in addition to the price of the gold leaf, which had to come out of his own pocket since the Admiralty issued only small quantities of yellow paint for ornamental work). Ramage had idly commented to Southwick that the spiral-shaped triton shell actually existed in the West Indies and to Ramage's surprise the old Master had become quite interested, having previously thought that, like Triton himself, it was a stylized object.
Anyway, it seemed that Southwick had told the master's mate, who'd told a quartermaster. Soon a request had come back from the ship's company: if they found a real triton shell could they use it to replace the wooden one?
This, Ramage realized in retrospect, was one of the first solid indications that not only had the original ship's company and the former Kathleens become firmly knitted together, but they'd developed a pride in their ship. And pride in a ship, he knew only too well from past experience, meant a happy ship. So he'd agreed, offering a guinea to the man who found a shell of the right size to fit into Triton's hand.
The men had been delighted—a guinea was within a shilling or two of a month's pay for most of them; but Ramage knew whoever found such a shell would have earned it—the wooden one was a foot long, and the shells were rarely more than eight or nine inches. He also knew that the man who found it would be the proudest in the ship ...
Occasionally Southwick, his white hair flying in the wind, stumped up to the bow to watch the gilders at work. It was a fiddling but fascinating job, and Ramage too had watched them begin. After cleaning up the whole carving and scrubbing it with fresh water and soap to remove salt and dirt, they'll let it dry, one of them watching in case spray deposited more salt on it. They'd then carefully covered it with canvas for the night and next morning were badgering the bosun's mate for a tin of yellow paint, wanting to pour off some of the thick oil on top to use as size.
Leaving the oil to stand in a pot, they'd painted the figurehead with the appropriate colours, and when they were dry, brushed on the size where the gold leaf was to be applied, and left it until it was almost dry.
By that time they'd managed to wheedle a chamois leather from Southwick and sewn it into a small, fiat pad. Once again, with all the enthusiasm of schoolboys, they'd gone back to the bow, secured ropes round their waists in case they fell, and despite the pitching and rolling, with the sea bubbling and spouting only a few feet below them, managed to transfer the gold leaf piece by piece from the book in which it was kept to the chamois leather pad.