tion, apparently adding its power to the engine;
and there were stout ropes, here and there, which I never observed
before in the rigging of any motor.

I hesitated to enter, for the future, though not absolutely certain,
looked full of hope and promise; but Dolly was firm and reckless. I am
ten years her senior, but still young to be called a "'fraid cat" with
impunity; so I finally mounted the vehicle. The driver gave a gay,
insouciant tap to a front tire, as much as to say: "Courage, mon
enfant! C'est la derniere fois!"--then flung himself into his seat,
and, blowing a horn, started his base-hospital up the mountain at a
breakneck pace. The motor's own horn was out of commission, but there
was a substitute by the driver's side. It was easy for him to blow it
because he had no particular use for either of his hands, his steering
being left largely to chance. Repeated expostulations in
boarding-school French only elicited a reply that sounded like: "Soyez
tranquilles, mesdames. You speak American? Bien! Leezy est
parfaitement docile!"

This conveyed no idea to me, although his broad grin convinced me that
in his own opinion it was a subtle witticism. At length, however, it
burst upon Dolly, who went off into irrepressible gales of laughter.

"You have lived so continuously in a rarefied Winthrop atmosphere,
Charlotte, that you haven't any modern vocabulary. He is telling you
the pet name of his car, to give you confidence. Nobody ever dies in a
tin 'Lizzie.' Not only is the machine indestructible, but the people
that ride in it. Isn't the driver a witty, reckless darling?"

He was, indeed; and, incredible as it may seem, Lizzie ascended and
descended the mountain in safety--though only because a kind
Providence watched over us. Then, when we had paid the reckless,
danger-proof darling twice the sum he should have demanded, we sat on
a bench in the Savanna, where we could be quietly grateful that we
were alive and watch the coming and going of the Fort-de-France
townspeople, so unmistakably French, with the bright costumes of the
women, the pose of their turbans or hats, their sparkle and chatter
and vivacious gestures.

Here in the Savanna travelers always gather to look at the marble
statue of the Empress Josephine, which is called the greatest work of
art in the West Indies. That is not fatuous praise, perhaps, but the
figure needed the hand of no master sculptor to hold the eye and
captivate the imagination. I