Two Years in the French West Indies | Page 3

sail instantly makes an acute silhouette against the
monstrous disk,--rests there in the very middle of the vermilion sun.
His face crimsons high above her top-masts,--broadens far beyond
helm and bowsprit. Against this weird magnificence, her whole shape
changes color: hull, masts, and sails turn black--a greenish black.
Sun and ship vanish together in another minute. Violet the night comes;
and the rigging of the foremast cuts a cross upon the face of the moon.

II.
Morning: the second day. The sea is an extraordinary blue,-- looks to
me something like violet ink. Close by the ship, where the foam-clouds
are, it is beautifully mottled,--looks like blue marble with exquisite
veinings and nebulosities.... Tepid wind, and cottony white
clouds,--cirri climbing up over the edge of the sea all around. The sky
is still pale blue, and the horizon is full of a whitish haze.
... A nice old French gentleman from Guadeloupe presumes to say this
is not blue water--he declares it greenish (_verdâtre_). Because I cannot
discern the green, he tells me I do not yet know what blue water is.
_Attendez un peu!_...
... The sky-tone deepens as the sun ascends,--deepens deliciously. The
warm wind proves soporific. I drop asleep with the blue light in my
face,--the strong bright blue of the noonday sky. As I doze it seems to
burn like a cold fire right through my eyelids. Waking up with a start, I

fancy that everything is turning blue,--myself included. "Do you not
call this the real tropical blue?" I cry to my French fellow-traveller.
_"Mon Dieu! non_," he exclaims, as in astonishment at the question;--
"this is not blue !" ...What can be his idea of blue, I wonder!
Clots of sargasso float by,--light-yellow sea-weed. We are nearing the
Sargasso-sea,--entering the path of the trade-winds. There is a long
ground-swell, the steamer rocks and rolls, and the tumbling water
always seems to me growing bluer; but my friend from Guadeloupe
says that this color "which I call blue" is only darkness--only the
shadow of prodigious depth.
Nothing now but blue sky and what I persist in calling blue sea. The
clouds have melted away in the bright glow. There is no sign of life in
the azure gulf above, nor in the abyss beneath--there are no wings or
fins to be seen. Towards evening, under the slanting gold light, the
color of the sea deepens into ultramarine; then the sun sinks down
behind a bank of copper- colored cloud.

III.
Morning of the third day. Same mild, warm wind. Bright blue sky, with
some very thin clouds in the horizon,--like puffs of steam. The glow of
the, sea-light through the open ports of my cabin makes them seem
filled with thick blue glass.... It is becoming too warm for New York
clothing....
Certainly the sea has become much bluer. It gives one the idea of
liquefied sky: the foam might be formed of cirrus clouds
compressed,--so extravagantly white it looks to-day, like snow in the
sun. Nevertheless, the old gentleman from Guadeloupe still maintains
this is not the true blue of the tropics
... The sky does not deepen its hue to-day: it brightens it-- the blue
glows as if it were taking fire throughout. Perhaps the sea may deepen
its hue;--I do not believe it can take more luminous color without being

set aflame.... I ask the ship's doctor whether it is really true that the
West Indian waters are any bluer than these. He looks a moment at the
sea, and replies, "Oh yes!" There is such a tone of surprise in his "oh"
as might indicate that I had asked a very foolish question; and his look
seems to express doubt whether I am quite in earnest.... I think,
nevertheless, that this water is extravagantly, nonsensically blue!
... I read for an hour or two; fall asleep in the chair; wake up suddenly;
look at the sea,--and cry out! This sea is impossibly blue! The painter
who should try to paint it would be denounced as a lunatic.... Yet it is
transparent; the foam-clouds, as they sink down, turn sky-blue,--a
sky-blue which now looks white by contrast with the strange and
violent splendor of the sea color. It seems as if one were looking into
an immeasurable dyeing vat, or as though the whole ocean had been
thickened with indigo. To say this is a mere reflection of the sky is
nonsense!--the sky is too pale by a hundred shades for that! This must
be the natural color of the water,--a blazing azure,--magnificent,
impossible to describe.
The French passenger from Guadeloupe observes that the sea is
"beginning to become blue."

IV.
And the fourth day. One awakens unspeakably lazy;--this must be the
West Indian languor. Same sky, with a few more