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‘He must have had a damn hard time in England. Now they’re taking him back to his mother.’
    ‘They gave him an injection and put him in the sick bay,’ Philip said. ‘I must say I wasn’t expecting that at all. Insulting these Spanish officers in front of everybody.’
    ‘Saving on the bad food, if you ask me,’ Correia said. ‘I wish they could give me a injection. I not been sleeping on this ship at all. Is the food. All this hispanol this and hispanol that.’
    After dinner I went down to the sick bay. The doors were open. All the beds were empty except for one, in the corner, on which the pipe-smoker lay, still in his black serge trousers and blue shirt, a bit of plaster on his forehead. No doors were needed to keep him there.
    Very late that evening or very early next morning we were to load up with more emigrants at Grenada, the spice island. It was our last night on board and we had a little party in the bar. The barman had not prepared for us and we quickly exhausted his brandy and Spanish champagne. We roused purser and stewards but could get no more drink. While we were talking to a steward an emigrant from St Kitts said he could help us, if we wanted brandy.
    ‘Let the poor feller keep it,’ Mr Mackay said, his soft mood persisting. ‘Is probably the first and last bottle of brandy he ever going to buy. When the cold start busting his skin in England he going to be damn glad of that brandy.’
    But the emigrant insisted. He was short, middle-aged and fat, with spectacles and a scratched skin.
    Kripal Singh and I went down to the emigrant’s cabin, going lower and lower, picking our way past babies down polished, hot corridors, catching glimpses of choked little cabins, heads below sheets, one above the other, opened suitcases, hearing sounds of thick muted activity all round us, seeing men and women hurrying to and from lavatories. The emigrant did not let us into his cabin. He half opened his door – four bunks, each dotted with a head emerging out of sheets, and many suitcases – squeezed in, shut the door, and presently came out with a bottle whose label was all gone except for one corner with the word ‘brandy’.
    Kripal Singh, whom I regarded as an expert in these matters, looked satisfied. He gave the emigrant five dollars and the emigrant, retiring, shut the door of his cabin.
    We ran up with the bottle to the deck, where the fresh air revived us.
    Philip said, ‘This is rum. Even Spanish brandy isn’t that colour. This is a thing they call sugarcane brandy.’
    We all three went down again to the hot, airless lower decks. We knocked. The emigrant opened. He was in vest and pants, without his spectacles. He gave us our money back and took his bottle, without a word.
    ‘You see what I mean, Miss Tull,’ Mr Mackay said. ‘You see how these beasts treat their own people? And he ain’t even get to England. When a few white fellers jump on him and mash his arse he will start bawling about colour prejudice.’
    We were leaving Grenada in its early morning stillness when I got up next morning. The sun was not out. The sea was bright grey, the sky light, the hills a cool green, the water at their feet shadowed and still. It was like a Sunday morning. After breakfast the sun was high and hot and the emigrants were thick in the bow of the ship.
    Skirts and dresses flapped in the breeze; they chattered and pointed; they might have been on a day cruise.
    We now acknowledged Mr Mackay as our West Indian expert. Philip asked him, ‘How about these Grenadians? They does get on with people from St Kitts?’
    ‘You have me there. People from St Kitts don’t like people from Antigua. But I don’t know about Grenadians. I only hope they don’t start fighting before we reach Trinidad.’
    Suddenly at lunchtime the water changed from deep blue to olive, and the new current of colour was edged with white froth. We were in the flood waters of the Orinoco River. I had no idea they reached so far