Throw dat
overboard.' R-----, who knew it was not manchineel, whispered to a
bystander, 'Ce n'est pas vrai.' But the brown lady was a linguist.
'Ah! mais c'est vrai,' cried she, with flashing teeth; and retired,
muttering her contempt of English ignorance and impertinence.

And, as it befell, she was, if not quite right, at least not quite
wrong. For when we went into the cabin, we and our unlucky yellow
flower were flown at by another brown lady, in another gorgeous
turban, who had become on the voyage a friend and an intimate; for
she was the nurse of the baby who had been the light of the eyes of
the whole quarter-deck ever since we left Southampton--God bless it,
and its mother, and beautiful Mon Nid, where she dwells beneath the
rock, as exquisite as one of her own humming-birds. We were so
scolded about this poor little green apple that we set to work to
find put what it was, after promising at least not to eat it. And
it proved to be Thevetia neriifolia, and a very deadly poison.

This was the first (though by no means the last) warning which we
got not to meddle rashly with 'poison-bush,' lest that should befall
us which befell a scientific West Indian of old. For hearing much
of the edible properties of certain European toadstools, he resolved
to try a few experiments in his own person on West Indian ones;
during the course of which he found himself one evening, after a
good toad-stool dinner, raving mad. The doctor was sent for, and
brought him round, a humbled man. But a heavier humiliation awaited
him, when his negro butler, who had long looked down on him for his
botanical studies, entered with his morning cup of coffee. 'Now,
Massa,' said he, in a tone of triumphant pity, 'I think you no go
out any more cut bush and eat him.'

If we had wanted any further proof that we were in the Tropics, we
might have had it in the fearful heat of the next few hours, when
the Shannon lay with a steamer on each side, one destined for 'The
Gulf,' the other for 'The Islands'; and not a breath of air was to
be got till late in the afternoon, when (amid shaking of hands and
waving of handkerchiefs, as hearty as if we the 'Island-bound,' and
they the 'Gulf-bound,' and the officers of the Shannon had known
each other fourteen years instead of fourteen days) we steamed out,
past the Little Saba rock, which was said (but it seems incorrectly)
to have burst into smoke and flame during