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We were instructed to keep a sharp lookout for the steamer "Monserrat," which had gained fame as a blockade runner. It was rumored that she carried Captain-General Blanco; that she was well armed, and had a captain noted for his unscrupulousness and for his fighting qualities.
I had gone there with an English friend Mrs Frampton in order to be near connections who had lived in the country for many years. A cousin and I spent a delightful afternoon in that Cintra paradise of Monserrat, with General and Mrs Sartorius, who were living there at the time of my visit to Portugal. I have heard that even this charming house could tell strange tales if only walls could speak.
This expressed the sentiments of the whole ship's company. To have one more good fight in which we were to come out victorious, of course get a few souvenir shot holes where no harm would be done, and then go home. This would just about have suited us. We floated around lazily all day Friday and Saturday with a chip on our shoulder, as it were, but no "Monserrat" came to knock it off.
In the distance she could see Monserrat and Antigua, gray blurs on the blue water, she could hear the singing of negroes in the cane fields far away, but near her no living thing moved save the monkeys in the tree tops, the blue butterflies, the jewelled humming-birds.
As Alexander darted through the store, the clerks were tumbling over each other to secure the hurricane windows; for until the last minute, uneasy as they were, they had persuaded themselves that St. Croix was in but for the lashing of a hurricane's tail, and had bet St. Kitts against Monserrat as flattening in the path of the storm. The hurricane windows were of solid wood, clamped with iron.
The orders were to blockade the passage and keep a bright lookout for the "Monserrat"; if by Sunday at six o'clock she had not appeared, we were to return to the fleet. The men who were so sure that we should never see Guantanamo again wore a sheepish air, and those who were not so sure lorded over them and remarked cheerfully, "I told you so."
About noon of the next day the fleet reached an island which Juan de la Cosa laid down on his map with the name Santa Maria de Monserrat. From the Indian women on board it was understood that this island had been depopulated by the Caribs and was then uninhabited.
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