Chapter 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.