A blue, red, and yellow macaw chained to a
stanchion spreads his wings against the sun in an ecstasy of terror.
Half-a-dozen red-gold pines and bananas have been knocked down from
their ripening-places, and are lying between the feet of the fighters.
One pine has rolled against the long brown fur of a muzzled bear. His
owner, a bushy-bearded Hindu, kneels over the animal, his body-cloth
thrown clear of a hard brown arm, his fingers ready to loose the
muzzle-strap. The ship's cook, in blood-stained white, watches from the
butcher's shop, and a black Zanzibari stoker grins through the bars of
the engine-room-hatch, one ray of sun shining straight into his pink
mouth. The officer of the watch, a red-whiskered man, is kneeling down
on the bridge to peer through the railings, and is shifting a long, thin
black revolver from his left hand to his right. The faithful sunlight
that puts everything into place, gives his whiskers and the hair on the
back of his tanned wrist just the colour of the copper pot, the bear's
fur and the trampled pines. For the rest, there is the blue sea beyond
the awnings.
Three years' hard work, beside the special knowledge of a lifetime,
would be needed to copy - even to copy - this picture. Mr. So-and-so,
R.A., could undoubtedly draw the bird; Mr. Such-another (equally R.A.)
the bear; and scores of gentlemen the still life; but who would be the
man to pull the whole thing together and make it the riotous, tossing
cataract of colour and life that it is?
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