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It is plentiful in Trinidad; still more plentiful in Guiana; and yet all of it which reaches Europe is a little of its hard beautiful wood for the use of cabinetmakers; while in Demerara, I am assured by an eye-witness, many tons of this precious Greenheart bark are thrown away year by year.
Her sides are some eighteen inches thick, and sheathed and resheathed with "greenheart" to help her in battering the ice. Inside she is ceiled with English oak and beech, so that her portholes look like the arrow slits of the windows of an old feudal castle.
From the snug security of the cavernous greenheart, the little, woolly douroucoulis or night monkeys roused themselves from their daylight slumbers, peered out into the fading light with round, blinking eyes, and then curled up again for another nap.
Salmon fly-rods are now made principally of two materials, greenheart and split-cane; the former is less expensive, the latter is more durable; it is entirely a matter of taste which a man uses, but the split-cane rod is now rather more in favour, and for salmon-fishing it is in England usually built with a core of steel running from butt to tip and known as a "steel centre."
There was a weird stillness over all, and whenever the ship was moved amongst the ice-floes a curious hiss was heard; this sound is well known to all ice navigators: it is the sear of the floe against the greenheart sheathing which protects the little ship, and it is to the ice-master what the strange smell of the China Seas is to the far Eastern navigator, what the Mediterranean "cheesy odours" and the Eucalyptus scents of Australia are to the P. and O. officers, and what the pungent peat smoke of Ireland is to the North Atlantic seaman.
Then we all perceived what a strong interest we felt in the study and use of the bow and arrow. The club was formed immediately, and our thirty members began to discuss the relative merits of lancewood, yew, and greenheart bows, and to survey yards and lawns for suitable spots for setting up targets for home practice.
They had her built composite iron, teak-wood, and greenheart, and her scantling was something fabulous. If ever an order was given for a ship in a spirit of pride this one was. Everything of the best. The commodore captain of the employ was to command her, and they planned the accommodation for him like a house on shore under a big, tall poop that went nearly to the mainmast. No wonder Mrs.
It was not repeated, and finally, treading with the utmost caution so as not to alarm the mysterious vocalist, I crept on until, coming to a greenheart with a quantity of feathery foliage of a shrub growing about its roots, I saw that just beyond the tree the ground was more open still, letting in the sunlight from above, and that the channel of the stream I sought was in this open space, about twenty yards from me, although the water was still hidden from sight.
The boat which I selected was ketch-rigged much like a yawl, but more comfortable for lying-to in heavy weather, the sail area being more evenly distributed. Her freeboard being only three feet, we replaced her wooden hatches, which were too large for handling patients, by iron ones; and also sheathed her forward along the water-line with greenheart to protect her planking in ice.
Once, twice it swished; the third time it alighted like thistledown on the surface. There was a tiny splash, a laugh, and the little greenheart rod flicked a trout high over his head. It was the merest baby half-an-ounce, perhaps and it fell from the hook into the herbage some yards from the stream. "Little ass!" said Maynard. "That was meant for your big brother."
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