Here the letter shall again
take up the story, and be a narrative of Dyck Calhoun's life from that
time until this Christmas Day.
What to do was the question. I knew no one in Jamaica--no one at
all except the governor, Lord Mallow, and him I had fought with
swords in Phoenix Park five years before. I had not known he was
governor here. I came to know it when I first saw him riding over
the unpaved street into Kingston from Spanish Town with his suite,
ornate with his governorship. He was a startling figure in scarlet,
with huge epaulets on his lieutenant-general's uniform, as big a pot
as ever boiled on any fire-chancellor, head of the government and of
the army, master of the legislature, judging like one o'clock in the
court of chancery, controller of the affairs of civil life, and
maker of a policy of which he alone can judge who knows what
interests clash in the West Indies.
English, French, Spanish, and Dutch are all hereabout. All struggle
for place above the other in the world of commerce and society,
though chiefly it is the English versus the French in these days;
and the policy of the governor is the policy of the country.
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