If the ’Badians happened to be in the minority, they bore it as best they might or retorted that “You men awnt civ’lized. You don’ know better’n to wear alpargats to a charch of a Sunday,” a response which usually brought on a loud cracking of tough skulls, as, like enraged goats, the men butted one another’s wool-covered craniums—a contest in which the ’Badian always emerged victorious. For to accuse an islander of wearing alpargatas (the sandal-like footgear brought from Venezuela) to church, is an insult not lightly to be suffered. Indeed, if ever there was a being who outshone Solomon in all his glory, it is the West Indian negro on the Sabbath; and his highest ambition is, in order to draw greater attention to his gorgeous raiment, to possess a pair of brilliant, pumpkin-colored shoes which, to quote his own words, “goes queek, queek when Ah walks in de charch.” As might be expected, in the constant change and interchange of multicolored flotsam and jetsam, we picked up many a strange and interesting, not to say downright weird, character. There, for example, was Trouble. He appeared one glorious golden morn as we lay at anchor off St. John, like Aphrodite rising from the sea, his scanty garments dripping with brine; for, being both boatless and penniless, he had used nature’s gifts to win his way from shore to ship like the amphibious creature he proved to be. But, aside from the unexpected manner of his appearance, nothing could have resembled the goddess of the sea less. In fact, he was unquestionably the ugliest and most repulsive representative of the genus Homo and the species Sapiens that I have ever gazed upon—bony and big, with gorilla-like arms and a face so broad and forehead so low that his head appeared to have been forced out of shape by hydraulic pressure, while his natural absence of human-like features had been enhanced by some accident which had deprived him of even the semblance of a nose. There, above his immense mouth, were two huge round holes which, when he grinned,—as he constantly did,—stretched into slits that seemed ever on the point of meeting his ears and literally severing his black face into upper and lower hemispheres. Like a prize bull-pup, he was so extravagantly ugly that he actually was fascinating, and not until he spoke could I take my eyes from him. And his first words were almost as astounding and unexpected as his appearance: “Ah’m beggin’ o’ yo’ pawdon, Boss, for mah audacity an’ assumption o’ de manner o’ mah absence o’ dignification for precip’tately discommodin’ yo’, but Ah’d like for to propoun’ de interrogation ef yo’ can absorbinate mah sarvices for a member o’ de crew, sir, for to circumnavigate de islan’s, sir.” Was I dreaming, or had the climate affected my brain? I literally gasped.