I speak of the shadow of war, and the ghosts of gallant soldiers and sailors.

Truly here 'The spirits of our fathers Might start from every wave; For the deck it was their field of fame, And ocean was their grave,' and ask us: What have you done with these islands, which we won for you with precious blood?
What could we answer?
We have misused them, neglected them; till now, ashamed of the slavery of the past, and too ignorant and helpless to govern them now slavery is gone, we are half-minded to throw them away again, or to allow them to annex themselves, in sheer weariness at our imbecility, to the Americans, who, far too wise to throw them away in their turn, will accept them gladly as an instalment of that great development of their empire, when 'The stars and stripes shall float upon Cape Horn.' But was it for this that these islands were taken and retaken, till every gully held the skeleton of an Englishman?
Was it for this that these seas were reddened with blood year after year, till the sharks learnt to gather to a sea-fight, as eagle, kite, and wolf gathered of old to fights on land?
Did all those gallant souls go down to Hades in vain, and leave nothing for the Englishman but the sad and proud memory of their useless valour?
That at least they have left.
However we may deplore those old wars as unnecessary; however much we may hate war in itself, as perhaps the worst of all the superfluous curses with which man continues to deface himself and this fair earth of God, yet one must be less than Englishman, less, it may be, than man, if one does not feel a thrill of pride at entering waters where one says to oneself,--Here Rodney, on the glorious 12th of April 1782, broke Count de Grasse's line (teaching thereby Nelson to do the same in like case), took and destroyed seven French ships of the line and scattered the rest, preventing the French fleet from joining the Spaniards at Hispaniola; thus saving Jamaica and the whole West Indies, and brought about by that single tremendous blow the honourable peace of 1783.

On what a scene of crippled and sinking, shattered and triumphant ships, in what a sea, must the conquerors have looked round from the Formidable's poop, with De Grasse at luncheon with Rodney in the cabin below, and not, as he had boastfully promised, on board his own Fills de Paris.

Truly, though cynically, wrote Sir Gilbert Blane, 'If superior beings make a sport of the quarrels of mortals, they could not have chosen a better theatre for this magnificent exhibition, nor could they ever have better entertainment than this day afforded.' Yon lovely roadstead of Dominica--there it was that Rodney first caught up the French on the 9th of April, three days before, and would have beaten them there and then, had not a great part of his fleet lain becalmed under these very highlands, past which we are steaming through water smooth as glass.

You glance, again, running down the coast of Martinique, into a deep bay, ringed round with gay houses embowered in mango and coconut, with the Piton du Vauclain rising into the clouds behind it.