The Green Hell Treasure

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Pre-Lenten Carnival in Bridgetown, Barbados, easternmost of the Lesser Antilles, with the SS Porto Alegre of Brazilian registry anchored out in the wide roadstead, swaying slightly in the wash of a lesser draft Panamanian freighter seeking a berth closer to land. Evening coming on with tropical swiftness, a smattering of stars beginning to pierce the velvet fabric of the sky, and the majority of the crew and passengers of the cruise ship already ashore by lighter, chaperoned by cruise director and directoress and intent upon escape, enjoying the heady sensation of distant places, the rich warmth of the Caribbean night, the gay costumes, the dancing in the streets, the hysteria — not the mad abandon of Rio de Janeiro, but still Carnival — the rum drinks thrust upon one from all sides, the beautiful women — again not Rio, but still...

Orange-red sun sinking fast in the west, a huge balloon being tugged from somewhere below the edge of the world into the darkening ocean; one expected a hiss as it went under, a sudden jetting of steam, but instead it merely flooded the ruffled surface with a shimmering carpet of gold from the ship to the horizon. Bridgetown proper on the ship’s starboard side to the east, lights beginning to flicker from the city poles planted before the low concrete-block warehouses at water’s edge, from Trafalgar Square visible behind a battery of fishing trawlers and yachts rocking at dockside before Nelson’s monument, their kerosene lanterns swinging on gimbals beside cabin hatchways or high on swaying crosstrees, brighter lights from the white buildings along Broad Street with their own generators, or from the verandaed homes hiding behind the thick stands of flamboyant and tamarind and casuarina trees on the low rolling slopes of the city.

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