Trinidad

Trinidad is the setting for a brief but revealing shore-leave episode in which Joe Williams encounters both the island’s vivid landscape and the unequal circumstances of life ashore. The journey from Port of Spain’s waterfront into the wooded interior gives the scene its changing scale: from a sailor without pay, sheltering from rain, to an island excursion arranged by a wealthy-seeming tourist who envies the freedom Joe’s hard labor actually denies him.

Arrival and Port of Spain

The steamer Argyle reaches Port of Spain after a punishing passage and work among hides, rust, and hot steel. As the ship is warped into the wharf, rain soaks the crew through; the islands’ dense green foliage turns grey beneath the downpour, and the heat leaves the ship’s officer hissing orders in a whisper. When the sun returns, everything steams. There is talk that the ship may be sent to the Pitch Lake to load asphaltum, and the prospect adds to the crew’s soreness before the loading even begins.

The next day brings little relief. The hides stink when the forward hold is opened, and clothes and bedding hung out to dry are repeatedly drenched by showers. There is no dry refuge under the dripping deck awning. This shipboard setting makes Joe’s brief time ashore feel less like a holiday than a pause in an exhausting routine: his watch gets off, but nobody has been paid.

A shore leave without money

Joe sits in a waterfront park beneath a palm tree, staring at his feet, before taking shelter from the rain under an awning outside a bar. Cool air carries the scent of limes and rum from the drinks inside, but he has no money for the beer he wants. The scene places the island’s attractions within reach while keeping them financially inaccessible to him.

There he meets an American tourist who introduces himself as Jones. Jones is on a West Indies cruise, complains that the war has prevented him from going to Europe, and talks of wishing he could ship on boats and travel as Joe does. His admiration reverses the apparent hierarchy between tourist and sailor: Jones imagines Joe’s life as freedom, while Joe knows the limits imposed by low pay and the requirement to return to the ship. Their different circumstances remain visible as they move through the city. On the rain-brimmed streets, the crowds include people in turbans, well-dressed Chinese residents, white men in white clothing, and ragged people of different complexions.

The island excursion

Jones persuades Joe to ride out of town in a car with a Chinese driver. The route passes British bungalows and institutional buildings, then continues through dense, steamy woods. Jones talks almost continuously about adventure, his responsibility for his mother, his anxiety, and his wish for an intimate friend who understands life; he presents Joe as just such a companion. He offers cigarettes, and the travelers finish a flask of punch before the driver announces that the Blue Pool, described as one of Trinidad’s principal attractions, is a short walk away.

At the path’s end, Joe steps away to urinate beside a large tree with shaggy red bark. Jones follows and makes a suggestive remark, but Joe turns instead to the driver to ask where they can see monkeys. The driver spots movement in the foliage: three monkeys leap away through the branches, one carrying a pinkish infant. Joe is delighted by the sight of animals truly wild, and hurries up the path to look for more, leaving Jones to struggle to keep pace. The episode briefly redirects attention from Jones’s talk and implied intimacy to the living landscape that has caught Joe’s interest.

The hotel and the scene’s contrast

After the excursion, the car returns to Port of Spain through streets brimful of rainwater. Joe feels conspicuous in his wet dungarees as he enters the hotel lobby, while Jones puts an arm over his shoulders on the stairs. In his large room, which smells of bay rum, Jones orders gin fizzes and invites Joe to take off his clothes and relax. Joe refuses, saying his clothes stink, and asks instead for the newspaper’s sports page. His insistence on that ordinary request, rather than accepting Jones’s invitation, keeps the difference between them plain.

Trinidad’s role in the episode rests on these contrasts: oppressive rain and sudden steaming heat, a sailor without pay and a tourist able to arrange a car and hotel drinks, Jones’s imagined freedom at sea and Joe’s actual obligation to return aboard. The island is not merely a scenic interlude. Its crowded streets and wooded paths expose how differently the two Americans experience travel, while the monkeys provide Joe with a direct, uncomplicated reason to move on from the tourist’s performance of companionship.