THE dream days have come and gone. We have left historic Santiago with its forts and battle-fields, and the beautiful harbour of busy commercial Cienfuegos; we have skirted along the southern coast of Cuba, Pearl of the Antilles, through the Yucatan Channel, into the Gulf of Mexico, and now we are come to Havana, where countless voices call us in every direction both day and night.

You are known to me, yet I cannot speak your names. You are near to me, yet the continent divides us. Your eyes speak to me, and yet, should we meet, you would pass unrecognised. A universal love, a universal memory has called you to me, and space cannot separate us.

Far from the city they rest, where none may trouble their deep slumbers. Their only monument a bare worn path where thousands of those who loved your boys and honoured their memory have trodden down the grass about the lowly bed.

A FEW insignificant little photographs are lying on the desk before me. Some of them are blurred; some of them are out of focus. They have been for many months packed away among bundles of other photographs of a similar character, moved from their corner in the library amongst the books of travel, only to be occasionally dusted by the indifferent housemaid and packed away again out of sight.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Much as we touch the sacred belongings of the beloved dead, do I now bring forth from their lonely hiding-place the few photographs of St. Pierre and the fascinating shores of Martinique, which we took last winter, as we cruised through the Windward Islands.

Say what you may of the futility of a love which clings to places, it is nevertheless a passion so deeply rooted in some natures that neither life nor death seem able to cause its destruction. There is no reasoning with love; it is born to be, to exist, and why we love there is no finding out. Strange, this wonderful loving which comes to you and me! Not alone the love we lavish upon God’s creatures; upon father, mother, sister, brother, husband, wife, and children, and the whole world of humankind; but upon all of God’s handiwork: His trees, His flowers, His dear brown soil, His hills, His valleys, His broad, sweeping plains, His high, loftily crested peaks, His lonely byways, where shy birds and soft-footed beasts hold high carnival the livelong day.

Such a treasure-house was St. Pierre to me. In the midst of islands, each rivalling the other in loveliness, Martinique had a claim for homage which none other possessed. Its charm was felt even far out to sea, as its lofty headlands, with terrible Pelée looking over, struck a bold pace for the lesser isles to follow.

As we approached the still, deep harbour,—although the hour was late for landing,—we were so permeated by the puissant fascination of the place, that, against the protests of old wiseacres aboard, we nevertheless took the first available small boat, lured into the arms of St. Pierre by her irresistible summons.

The same hand beckoned us which has for generations been beckoning other children of men; other children who have gone there to live and die content; the same that beckoned old Father Dutertre hundreds of years ago. Children’s children have been born there, and have grown old and withered, and have gone the way of all the earth, and La Pelée, the giantess, has slept for generations, and the children had quite forgotten that the day might come when she would awaken. La Pelée was slumbering, oh! so gently—so peacefully, that far-away night, when we first wondered at her beauty—and we, too, forgot! For did not her children say that she would never waken more?

The soft, blue hills said, “Come!” The lonely peaks, beyond, said, “Come!” And the little city waved its pretty white hand to us with “Come!” in every motion; and the sweet-voiced creole lads, who rowed us in, smiled, “Come!” and what could we do?

The people said, “Come!” and we answered, and long, long into the night we were following the summons.

Then it was that La Pelée was fair, and she lay so still, so still, that the children forgot—if they ever really knew—that very beautiful women can sometimes be very wicked—only “sometimes,” for there are so many beautiful good women.

But the children loved La Pelée; she was beautiful, and she took her bath so gently, away amongst the clouds and mist of the morning.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

And I go on and on, and I come to the Rivière Roxelane where the women are spreading their clothes to dry on the great rocks, and the river tumbles along, and twists in and out with gentle murmurs, and the women are washing and laughing.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

It must have come—the end—just as the good priest was saying mass down in the white church by the sea, and the creole girls had come from the mountains with their sticks of palm—for salad—and had sold their fruits in the market, and had gone with the fishermen to the good priest; and the white church was crowded to the doors,—for the priest was beloved, and the church had broad arms,—and the boys were chanting, when—my God! where should the children escape? The fiery mountain back of them and the deep sea before them and the air about them a sweeping furnace!

The beautiful Pelée burned out her wicked soul, the River Roxelane ran dry, the dear, blue sky of morning was turned to hideous night, the white city fell in blazing ruins, and now the everlasting hills lift their scarred sides in grim desolation.

THE END