“May I venture to say that those boys are the most incorrigible rascals in the district. They do no work; they are dirty, lazy, and a terror to the neighbourhood. They give more trouble to the police than any other man or woman on the island.” The quality of mercy is immediately strained, and although the pardon flows out (mainly because the baker requests it) the dregs remain in a sentence to come up for judgment when called upon to do so. The boys jointly attempt to hide a wide and intelligent grin behind the battered remains of what must once have been a felt hat. And so the court goes on. The merry hum of the day insects mingles with the shrill tones of singing birds, and the chatter of anxious litigants in the yard below. The magistrate continues his anxious calculations, and the clerk is assiduous in his endeavours to balance a pair of rusty pince-nez on a nose obviously too slippery with sweat. The police inspector frowns round the room from behind the majestic screen of his helmet, and the black usher shouts silence, or swears a witness after the usual caution of “Take se bible in you righ’ ’and".... [Illustration: TROPICAL RAIN] THE MILITARY CAMP AT NEWCASTLE CHAPTER XI THE MILITARY CAMP AT NEWCASTLE In the streets of Kingston I had frequently seen companies of one or other of the brilliant West Indian Regiments swinging along to the music of their drums, and on dance and dinner nights I had noticed Artillery officers lounging about the terraces of my hotel. I had seen a couple of Service Corps men trying their polo ponies, and afar off, among a sparkling group of bejewelled women, I once caught sight of a glittering aide-de-camp. But of our friend Tommy of the line I had seen nothing. A friendly Artilleryman assured me that some of the British Line were on the island. I met him in the Kingston High Street, and he pointed towards the mountain chain which overhangs the town. “They’re up there,” he said. Following his direction, I saw a few white specks faintly showing through the summit haze of a mountain peak. The white specks, I discovered, were the cantonments of Newcastle, the military hill station of Jamaica. The next morning we started at nine, and drove along shaded lanes and dusty, open roads, flanked by gardens and plantations, banana trees, pines, and cocoanuts. Around us the air was transparently clear, above us a sky of the deepest blue, and everywhere--above, below and around--we felt the sun. For two miles we had the level road, and then we reached the mountains.