21. Martinique Revisited
Those who visit foreign nations, but who
associate only with their own countrymen, change their climate, but not their
customs; they see new meridians, but
the same men; and with heads as empty as their pockets,
return home with traveled bodies, but untraveled minds.
- Charles Caleb Colton
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Our sails bent to the thrust of the trade wind with Atom
comfortably surging and rolling along her 3,800-mile course towards Martinique
in the West Indies. Again Atom and I worked together as one. We stepped lightly
over these gentle seas of the South Atlantic and I breathed deeply from the same
fair wind she caught in her sails.
Life settled into that familiar sea routine that makes the
days pass easily. Morning twilight found me scanning the skies for a round of
sextant star sights. Soon after my position is plotted on the chart, the flaming
sun emerges and instantly another warm tropic day is born. I scan the horizon
for some familiar sign of human life: wisps of smoke from a passing ship or
airplane contrail overhead. Nothing appears. We are truly alone and I find it
comforting. Usually for breakfast I have cold oatmeal with raisons, cinnamon and
a few spoons of powdered milk all soaked in water. For a change of taste, I fry
up a cornmeal pancake instead and top it off with my last mashed overripe banana
from St. Helena.
On these fine days of settled weather, hours drifted by as I sat leaning back against the shaded side of the mast, watching Atom’s progress through the water, sometimes writing up my journal with notes from the islands in our wake. My midday meal these days, as on so many days before, was often a sandwich of sprouted mung beans and sliced onion smeared with a mustard and pepper sauce on cornbread.
Twice each day I rechecked the sails and rigging, which at this point in the voyage, were deteriorating rapidly. A few stitches added to a seam before it opened up further, carried me through another day.
If
clouds or sleep caused me to miss the morning’s star sights, I’d shoot the
sun twice in the afternoon. Across the South Atlantic the noon-to-noon log
invariably noted 100 to 120 miles of progress. In late afternoon’s waning
heat, a saltwater bucket shower followed a vigorous exercise session. Lately,
while they lasted, my favored evening meal was a dish of rice and curried
vegetables.
In the evening I read by oil lamp then watched the swaying
stars overhead until sleep came. Yes, I recklessly slept through most the night
in these serene and empty waters. A few hours before dawn I’d look out the
hatch to see my old companion, Halley’s Comet. Its 50 million-mile-long trail
continued to mark a parallel course to mine, though pointed in the opposite
direction with its tail streaming out towards me and its head pointing to the
lands I’d left, as if to lure me back.
At 10 degrees South latitude and 10 degrees West longitude
I sailed through an area unusually thick with shoals of flying fish bursting
into the air attempting flights of record length. Several times a day I heard
the thump of a flying fish stranded on deck and I moved quickly to throw them
back to the sea. At night, when inside the cabin, I suspended lifeguard duty and
left them to their fate. One morning I counted thirty-four fish had sacrificed
themselves on the deck. Atom could have fed a crew of a dozen cats on this
passage.
In this region I was visited by flocks of birds that considered Atom a resting station on their migration route. Except for being of a brown and gray color, they resembled crows, especially in their bold thuggish disposition. At night they perched everywhere in the rigging and all over the deck, where they screeched and bickered with each other ceaselessly. On the second night of their occupation, one even flew in through the open hatch. In a scene nicely suited to an old horror movie, I struggled with the demented bird flapping about my head until I abandoned the cabin and he followed me out.
On deck the birds showed no fear of me, which they demonstrated by flying around my head, crossly shrieking their annoyance at my presence. I tried chasing them away by flailing my arms and shouting like a madman, only to have them circle the boat once and land even more ill-tempered. Exasperated and a little frightened, I snapped a towel at one hovering in front of my face. It fell into the cockpit, flopping about with a broken wing. His shipmates eyed me now with more respect. I felt ashamed at my violence as I knocked the injured bird unconscious with an oar and dropped him into the sea. Now these innocent creatures knew humans were dangerous animals. By next morning they were gone and I was alone once more.
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Nearing the northern limit of the Southeast Trades, I
encountered squalls of rain and gray, overcast skies. One memorable, but
short-lived storm struck during the night, catching me asleep and laying Atom on
her side. In a rush to reduce sail I nearly stepped on deck without my harness,
then thought again and clipped it on at the companionway. On the slanted
foredeck, a breaking wave slapped the side of the hull, showering the cobwebs
from my mind. As I disconnected the whisker pole, it came loose from my grip,
knocking me into the lifelines with my feet dragging over the side in the warm
sea. Some skin scrapped from my knee was the only damage as I pulled myself back
to the deck and finished reefing down.
This brief storm marked the beginning of a long trial. My
progress slowed from one hundred to ninety, then under eighty miles a day.
Showers and shifty winds arrived hourly. I could have spent all my waking
moments adjusting course and sails to best advantage, and perhaps saved a day or
two on this leg of the voyage. Instead, as long as I was moving in the right
general direction, I tended to let things ride as they were. I’d learned many
times that a course error frequently corrected itself with the next squall and
wind shift, saving me the trouble of resetting the sails and steering. In any
case, I had no reason to brood much over a slow day; a day saved here likely
would pay no greater dividends than one spent anywhere else.
In the logbook I recorded:
“April 1 – DOLDRUMS! 2 degrees South, 31 degrees West.
Drifted into the Doldrums today. Heavy rain and shifting winds. A ship passed
heading towards Brazil – the first sighted on this passage. Today we are
sailing past Arquipelago De Fernando De Noronha some one hundred miles to our
southwest. It’s a big name for a group of islets so small they are barely
indicated on my chart. Got laid over by a sudden gust of wind this afternoon and
my plate of carefully tended bean sprouts was tossed to the floor.
“April 2 – Last night again I awoke to a howling
windstorm. I clearly had too much sail up, yet I stayed in my bunk hoping it
would all settle down. It must have been several minutes before I made the
decision to get up and reef sails and by that time both sails had ripped and the
mast was shuddering under the load. Today I was hit by at least twenty rain
squalls. But only one in four brought enough wind to require a reef. I find
myself more and more waiting until the last minute to make a decision for
action. I’m growing tired of this game and ready for some settled weather.
“April 4 – We drifted across the equator sometime last
night, crossing into the North Atlantic at 33 degrees West longitude. I must be
just barely across the line, having progressed only about ten miles in the past
twenty-four hours.”
The oppressive heat was confirmed by my bulkhead-mounted
hydrometer, which consistently measured humidity over 90 percent. The steady
drizzle was only contrasted with heavy downpours. I stood naked in the rain to
cool myself, moving as listlessly as the sails that caught the fickle zephyrs of
wind. Sails and sailor hung slack in mutual lassitude. I longed to hear the
sweet song of rising wind in the rigging instead of just the hiss of rain
droplets hitting the sea. My old mainsail and jib flopped side to side with the
boat’s roll and seemed to say, “We’ve come so far. But give us a wind and
we’ll show you we have many miles left in us yet.” Still we hung there
together in the sultry air beneath a glowering purple-tinged afternoon sky. On
the close horizon a black cloud released a charge of lightning. I held my breath
in anticipation of its thundering voice rolling over the sea.
A long time later, the sea surface stirred. As slippery as a fish after the thorough bottom-scrubbing I’d given her in St. Helena, Atom cut a wrinkle across the glassy waters. The push of a single hand could send her moving as easily as this barely detectable wind. At first we moved silently and level as an iceboat sailing a frozen lake. I sat motionless so as not to break the spell. Though barely perceptible at first, after twelve hours I was confident I’d emerged from those interminable Doldrums into the realm of the Northeast Trades.
Within a few days Atom was again averaging her
top speed running beam-on to the wind. The bumpy ride among the curling white
horses on the wave crests was jarring after so many days of flat water, but the
thrill of the unaccustomed speed made me press on with all the sail she could
take. I looked at the straining sails and thought, “Now, show us what you’re
made of, my old friends.”
On my chart I noted the coast of South America slowly
slip by 300 miles away off the port beam. First Brazil, where the mouth of the
Amazon flowed in a vast unending exhalation from the heart of the continent,
carrying its earthy waters undiluted as far as a hundred miles offshore. Then
French Guiana, Surinam, and British Guyana fell astern as well. Even the
rum-soaked island of Barbados, when its turn came, we passed unseen at a safe
distance of fifty miles.
When the cloud-capped mountains of Martinique pierced the
horizon, I felt the emotions of coming home after a long absence. I had last
seen Martinique’s green mantle of rain forest from this very deck some two and
a half years earlier on the return leg of a voyage from Bermuda to Trinidad. Now
in familiar waters with familiar land in sight, I longed for the smells and
sights and sounds of the tropic island, from the spiced air and Creole chatter
of the marketplace to the hidden creatures of the forest. It was a gorgeous day
of puffy white cumulus, flying fish taking wing, and the air filled with the
cries of tropicbirds.
As the island jewel drew closer, I recognized its features. Along the south coast we rounded Diamond Rock, a tiny, but tall islet that at one time held an English fort that peppered canon shots down on French shipping.
On the sheltered west coast of Martinique I was finally out of reach of the
rolling Atlantic swell. As the ocean current carried me along, my eyes feasted
on the greenness. I drew deep breaths of the aroma of growing forests mixed with
the perfume of island spices. Around a point of land emerged a sandy bay where a
fishing village centered itself around a white church steeple. Pulled up on the
beach were several high-bowed gommiers, the outboard powered fishing boats
hacked out of a single gum-tree log. One was visible on the west horizon. Soon
he would be “A Miquelon” as the locals say when their boat is out of sight
of land and they feel they have gone as far from home as Miquelon, a French
island off Canada.
In mid-afternoon I released the anchor among a crowd of some fifty yachts in Fort-De-France Bay near the stone walls of Fort Louis. Along the main boulevard of the waterfront, I watched from on deck the chaos of activity with detached interest. Happy to be here, yes, but not yet ready to join the bustle of society. Instead of rushing ashore, I prepared a meal and then fell into undisturbed sleep.
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On Sunday I awoke to church bells and later rowed ashore to
check in with the custom’s agent at their waterfront office. I then went for a
long walk around town, reacquainting myself with its narrow streets and tropical
Parisian atmosphere. The locals here are all French citizens and generally
regard themselves more French than West Indian. If there were pro-independence
feelings, they were not visible during my stay here. The Martiniquous are too
busy enjoying the prosperity of French rule to disrupt their life with the
radical ideas of self-rule their neighboring islands demanded of their
standoffish British
masters.
Sidewalk cafes are daily filled with people watching the passing scenery and sipping punch vieux. Before I became an old sailor myself, I read somewhere of an old sailor who claimed that any land looks good and every woman fair after a long sea journey. It is doubly true when the landfall is Martinique. The women are distractingly beautiful, dress in the latest fashions and carry themselves with proud elegance. It’s enough to bring any sailor to heel, especially if he speaks French.
Walking through town I hoped it wasn’t
too obvious how I stared at the long, dark ladies parading by. In some way I saw
the island girl I had loved in every woman that passed me on the street and
found myself imagining they were she. The reality was I received no smile of
recognition from these strangers. My erotic visions did not overcome my shyness,
nor did any girl here express the slightest in me, as just another tourist, or
worse, a sailor with empty pockets.
Like most French territories, the prices here are out of this world and I found myself as poor as a Haitian refugee swimming ashore at Miami Beach. Fortunately, money and women were not my chief concern as I planned my exploration of this last island I’d visit before returning home. My earlier visit to Martinique had been brief and I had not gone far into the interior. Now was my chance to correct that mistake.
Before setting out to walk across the island, I strengthened my legs for several
days by running along the waterfront at dawn and then again in the evenings. By
studying a guidebook and detailed maps, I settled on a route along the mountain
roads that lead north to the volcano peak of Mount Pelee and then back to the
coastal town of St. Pierre.
I shouldered my pack, cinched up its straps and began my
walk through the daily traffic snarl in Fort-De-France, which in this day was
compounded by a street protest march. This was no anti-colonialism protest, but
rather hundreds of striking government workers blocking the narrow streets
carrying signs demanding higher wages and benefits. A man at the head of the mob
whipped up enthusiasm by roaring his age-old complaints into a bullhorn. “Give
us more money for less work”, was the demand to a colonial government asking
for just the opposite.
Along the River Madame I passed the outdoor fish and vegetables markets where a Creole band of brass horns and bongo drums played a lively session. Beyond the hectic town, I walked Route De Balata as it steadily climbed towards the mountains. It seemed everyone in Fort-De-France was leaving town on this route and there was just enough width to the road for two small cars to pass with precious little curb for a pedestrian to squeeze by. Cars even climbed the curb when trucks blasted by with blaring horns and noxious exhaust in their wake. I’d not want to walk this road again, but there was no other road or path available heading north through the center of the island.
Along
this tiresome route I met Bernard, a local unemployed electrician who had missed
out on Martinique’s prosperity. He was returning on foot to his village after
a visit to the welfare office for his monthly check. We walked together dodging
traffic and getting acquainted until we arrived at Balata Village. At his
apartment there we shared a bowl of salad, bread and cheese while Bernard looked
over my map, pointing out the scenic areas, freshwater springs and campsites
ahead of me.
Beyond Balata, traffic became scarce and less threatening
and I enjoyed walking under shady trees adorned with mosses and vines. Fragrant
flower and perfume plantations drifted by and reminded me that the island’s
original name was ‘Madinina’ (Island of Flowers). All around me were heady
scents and the colors of hibiscus, oleander, flame-red frangipani and bunches of
anthuriums. Rows of papaya trees draped leafy branches over ripening fruit.
Women carried armloads of flowers back to pastel-colored homes. Flowery clinging
vines decorated delicate fences. Like in Bora Bora on the other side of the
world, long sticks of French bread hung out of mailboxes. Martinique fully
awakened my memories of the other French islands I loved so much.
Under each bridge on the road was at least one family
picnicking alongside a splashy stream. I stopped frequently to converse with
them and always received the same warnings: “Be careful of thieves. Watch out
for snakes.” As for thieves, I carried little of value. The snakes I believed
could watch out for me as they always had before.
The road tunneled through the mountain at Duex Choux and emerged at the entrance to a wide valley. A footpath led to the top of a hill where I made camp for the night at an open-sided shelter in a public park. Before me I enjoyed a view over forests of banana fields, and in the distance, the lower slopes of Mount Pelee, whose peak lay hidden under the dark clouds. At day’s end I unrolled my sleeping bag and lay myself out on the wooden picnic table. Lightning bugs decorated the darkness and the wind soughing through the trees combined its voice to distant waterfalls or perhaps another fast rock-bedded creek.
By dawn I was back on the road in a gray rain that persisted
through the day. Banana fields spread across the valley. Along the muddy trails,
tractors pulled wagons that workers loaded with bunches of the green fruit. I
couldn’t resist singing…”Come, Mr. Tally Mon, tally me banana (Daylight
come and he wan' go home).
In the country village of Morne Rouge, I stepped into a
shop to buy bread and vegetables. Greeting the woman shopkeeper in French
brought a continuous light-hearted rapid-fire Creole patois, the meaning of
which was lost on me. To be sociable, I mutely nodded yes or no when it seemed
appropriate, until she turned to chat up a more literate customer.
Outside town, I turned onto a road snaking its way up
the base of Mount Pelee. Where the road ended, I followed a path in a teeming
rain that by now had me soaked through. Progress was slow and none too steady on
the wet, moss-covered rocks and muddy holes. Wood stakes and signposts marked
the trail, but they were not at all needed, for I easily found my way by
following the trail of litter. If I took more than ten steps without
encountering a piece of trash, I knew I was off the trail. How sad to see,
throughout this otherwise beautiful island, the litter strewn every place people
had gone.
The trail leveled off and from what little I could see through the fog, I determined I reached the summit and was walking the rim of the volcanic crater. Along this ridge I found a tin-roofed rest house with walls built of stone blocks. I entered the one-room shelter through an open door to wait out the rain. Inside were a wooden table and two hard bunks, with room to take four steps in either direction – such unaccustomed mountaintop luxury.
A cold wind blew in through the swinging door and a broken window. I fortified myself with cups of tea heated over the meager flame of the solid fuel tablets I carried. Lacking a watch or the sun to look at, I guessed the time by the way the gloomy afternoon sky gave way to a dark and stormy night.
Eighty years earlier, this volcanic mountain abruptly blew its top. Within minutes, over thirty thousand people from the villages below perished under hot lava and poison gases. These days the mountain is again at rest, with its flanks only lightly repopulated.
The blackness of night gave way to another chill gray morning. The corners of my roof wept from the endless light rain. As I lifted open the unhinged door, a cloud rolled in to lay its damp hand on everything it touched. Strange to say, but I was at home in this cloud-wrapped haven despite the harsh environment and minor discomforts.
With long hours of little else to do, I mentally worked as I did at sea, to
cultivate a freedom from anticipation, that urgent thief who steals the
minute-to-minute awareness of life. I was content to stay another day in the
good company of raw nature and a book I brought by Henry David Thoreau. The
philosophic adventures of “Walden” where Thoreau homesteaded in a forest
cabin outside his New England village in the 1840’s took on an entirely new
dimension from the quietude of this dewy mountaintop stone house. I reconfirmed
here a lesson I’m condemned to learn over and over again – that our days are
stolen by our constant grasping at the phantoms of future happiness, when
thinking about living, rather than living itself, traps us in yesterday and
tomorrow. If children are not burdened by the knowledge that our pursuits may
end in sorrow, that love ends in separation, that birth gives way to old age and
death, then why should we dwell there if we are no less intelligent than a
child?
For two days I strolled in mist and rain around the
volcano’s rim or just sat thoughtfully on my mountaintop porch, letting the
world rush by unheard and unseen below me. I indulged my thoughts, as a disciple
of Thoreau, somewhat out of step with the majority of society and feeling the
better for it. Little by little, the silence of the mountain revealed it was not
silent at all. On my first day alone here I perceived the silent spaces between
the music of the wind and rain on the grassy slopes. By the second day, my
nerves and senses were restored to the point where every common thing becomes
exceptional, as if the world was created anew with every sighing draft of wind.
I thought of the native American concept of existence as a dream state, as
expressed in the Aztec poem:
It is not true,
it is not true
that we come on this earth to live.
We come only to sleep, only to dream.
The clouds never lifted from my mountain perch, yet I was
spiritually recharged as I jogged down to lower elevations on the road back
towards Morne Rouge. There I joined another road toward the coastal town of St.
Pierre. Back in the lower valley I emerged into sunlight and looked back at a
mountain still enveloped in that cloud of secret gifts. This road to the west
continued through banana fields bordered by straight rows of coconut, royal
palm, and giant bamboo. I noted mango, orange, pineapple, avocado and custard
apple fruits all flourishing alongside the houses and giving the valley the
appearance of life of perpetual fruit gathering and ease.
St. Pierre is a town facing the sea with its back up against a tempestuous volcano. I entered form the rear, walking through the narrow streets and alleys towards the waterfront. Once considered the center of civilization in the Caribbean, St Pierre was devastated by Pelee’s eruption in 1902. It now has the feeling of a town half resurrected. Much of the debris of former buildings lay about in heaps and piles. The current buildings are built on top of the broken foundations of earlier buildings.
A story goes that the
city’s sole survivor of the volcano was found when rescuers pulled a man from
an underground jail cell where he was protected from the tremendous blast of
heat. Of the ships anchored in the bay, all were sunk at their moorings by the
tidal wave that accompanied the eruption except for one ship that was getting
underway. Her deck crew perished, but the captain, choking for breath, managed
to steer his ship away and bring news of the disaster to the outside world.
It was Saturday, which in St. Pierre means market day. The
main street along the waterfront bustled with people crowded around the stands
of vendors selling fruit, vegetables and fish. The gommier fishing boats
were hauled out of the sea by volunteering hands and a bucket brigade of fish
moved from boats to vendors. On the beach I sat on the sand with my pack as a
backrest, mentally retracing the steps of my last walk across my last island on
this voyage.
My return to Fort-De-France was in a shared taxi that is
the preferred method of transport between towns. This was my first car ride in
several months and if I thought the local drivers reckless as they passed me
while I walked, the moment we took off I wished I were back taking my chances on
foot. Our driver drove like he was in a life or death rally. Small towns passed
us in a flash of buildings and narrowly missed chickens, dogs and pedestrians.
The dark Frenchman next to me was surely a longtime veteran of this route, since
he fell asleep minutes outside St. Pierre and was undisturbed by the sudden
stops and starts and finally had to be shaken awake by the driver when we
arrived an hour later at Fort-De-France.
Back aboard Atom in Flamingo Bay, I watched from deck as an island sloop, barely 25-foot long, skillfully tacked into the anchorage, being sailed alone by a black West Indian. When close by, he lowered his patchworked sails and stepped forward to release a homemade grapnel anchor. I called him over for dinner on Atom and that night I learned Joe Brown was a preacher and native to the nearby island of St. Lucia. He told me of his numerous passages between the islands in his old wooden sloop, carrying light cargos of island goods. Besides being a proselytizing Rastafarian – he brought his bible with him to dinner – he also brought over a thick, roughly finished clay bowl from which he ate my rice and vegetables. Shunning plastic ware, he only took food from his earthy-tasting bowl.
On this trip to Martinique, Joe carried a cargo of
vegetables and had contracted to deliver a motorcycle back to St. Lucia. The
next day, after unloading his goods at the dock, I assisted Preacher Joe
disassembling a 500 CC motorbike and loading the parts aboard his boat. When we
finished the job, the bike’s frame, engine and wheels took up all available
space within the small cabin where it was partially protected from the ocean
spray.
On May 4th I walked to the airport where I met
my mother, Helen, who flew out from Detroit to meet me for a one-week vacation.
It had been a long two years since our last meeting. I was also relieved to see
she brought some cash from my bank account since I was down to my last ten
dollars. After so long an absence, I convinced her to stay with me aboard Atom
where we could see each other all day, instead of me on the boat and her miles
away in an expensive tourist hotel. To accommodate her, and her hard luggage, I
cleared away the accumulated sailing gear, Zulu war clubs, gramophone and other
semi-precious cargo from the cramped forward cabin, which became her lair.
We rented a Renault car to tour the northern part of the island, tracing the same route I walked the week before. This time we followed the road beyond Mount Pelee all the way to the last fishing village at the tip of the island. The road ended here between cliffs that wedged the village of Grand Riviere so tightly it looked as if a good hard rain could wash the houses into the sea. Fishermen returned to the half circle cove in their gommiers after a day at sea. Using long oars, they maneuvered the boats backwards through the surf. When close enough, a dozen lean men rushed waist-deep into the water, grasping the boats gunwales and pulling it onto the stone-covered beach. Logs were laid under the keel and by force of muscle, they rolled the boats stern-to above high tide mark. A few paces above the landing, they weighed their catch on scales and dropped the fish into their customer’s bags.
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On another fine morning we sailed Atom out the harbor to
explore along the island’s south coast. That afternoon we approached the
anchorage at Grande Anse d’Arlet. The wind was fickle as it came over the
hills so we entered under power. The motor quickly overheated. Smoke from the
engine room was already pouring out the cabin hatch as I let go the anchor among
a tightly packed group of newer yachts. The smoke and the rattle of our anchor
chain awoke our lounging neighbors, who were mostly French charterers lying
naked on deck to soak up the sun. A few stood up and glanced over at our
intrusion with an air of mild annoyance and I was dutifully embarrassed at our
less than peaceful entry. “Are those people naked?” Helen asked with wide
eyes.
That night the wind shifted to onshore and a choppy swell rolled into the anchorage. By dawn we had been long awake from the extreme rolling and the snatching of the anchor chain against the bow roller. I now saw we had drifted dangerously close to the beach and most of the charter fleet had already fled under power. I hastily lifted the anchor aboard and tacked out to sea even before serving our morning tea.
I had gotten a bit careless here and
Helen no doubt wondered how I managed to get nearly round the world unscathed.
For a couple more hours we pounded into strong rain-laden headwinds. On each
tack, Atom heeled sharply and the sea often crashed aboard, soaking us
thoroughly. I hooked a harness around Helen’s waist and she wedged herself
into a corner of the cockpit where she remained without complaint until we
gained the protection of Flamingo Bay. Atom took the day somewhat worse, with
seawater soaking into the lockers and a new rip in the mainsail.
Before I could finish my lecture, a Vespa scooter raced up behind us carrying two teen-aged boys. At the last second they swerved towards us and the passenger reached out and nearly snatched Helen’s purse away, but she was too quick for them.
It was perhaps not the vacation experiences she had imagined, but the next day her visit was over all too soon. Although we did not speak much about it, my Mother was obviously relieved that my long voyage was nearly finished and equally relieved I did not make a hasty decision about marrying a girl from the islands. I wanted to tell her about the way the voyage had changed me, to explain how as the miles remaining of the voyage decreased, the mind miles separating me from home increased. When faced with the inexpressible, nothing need be said.
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