Darker recollections made Hainaut shiver. His master taking pleasure was not something he would ever wish to see; things best left in the dark, in prison cellars, with the younger, weaker, and frailer girls, the better. Mon Dieu, merde alors! Hainaut silently quailed, as some of the work gang came up to begin moving things around at his bidding.

Well, with his naval salary and Le Maitre's now-and-then admiring largesse, he could hire a tiny but elegant pied-a-terre room in one of the better harbour lodgings for sport. And his off-duty, moment-of-arising view would be splendid, at any rate.

Guadeloupe was nearly two islands, pinched in to a narrow causeway just north and west of Pointe-a-Pitre's environs that linked Grande-Terre, on which he stood, and Basse-Terre. Grande-Terre ran East-West, low and lushly verdant despite its exposure to the Nor'east Trades, all the way to Pointe des Chateaux and the farther islet of Desirade where dark Atlantic rollers met the turquoise Caribbean.

Basse-Terre ran North-South, also incredibly green but mountainous, dominated by the peak of the dormant volcano La Soufriere, tilled as orderly as terrace farms round Marseilles, its shore fringed with a series of neat little villages and white-sand beach hamlets along its eastern, windward shore across the great harbour in which he stood.

Petit-Bourg, Ste.-Marie, where Christopher Columbus was reputed to have first landed, Capesterre Belle-Eau south of there, before the coastline curved about Sou'west, hiding Trois Rivieres, the Vieux Fort, and the other, lee-side harbour of Basse-Terre.

So beautiful, Hainaut marvelled, so pleasingly alien, for once. After the bleakness of the rocky, wave-punched coasts of Europe; Biscay waters, Baltic, the German Sea, or Le Maitres beloved Channel ports in Brittany, even the softer Mediterranean or Italian shores, this was wondrous.