The next day, a man named Curtis Morton drove me over to the scuba center for what I hoped would be a dive to the sunken city of Jamestown. In addition to driving a taxi, Morton is a poet. I'd asked him the difference between Nevis and St. Kitts, and in no time he came out with:

"St. Kitts is shaped like a bat; Nevis is shaped like a ball.
Bat hits ball rather hard, and we don't like that at all.
Kittitians are more outgoing; they have cinemas, casinos, and the like.
Nevisians are more reserved; more fun, sun, beach, and hike.
Nevisians are more friendly, reaching out to even those they do not know.
If Kittitians are similar, it doesn't really show."

After I finished my dive (no sunken city but lots of brain coral and psychedelic fish and several enormous stingrays buried up to their eyes in the sand), it occurred to me that Morton's performance was the third time in forty-eight hours that I'd heard an islander recite poetry. (Before my departure from Rawlins Plantation, Kevin Horstwood had sat me down and read me Stevenson's "Christmas at Sea," his voice unexpectedly breaking when he got to the line about "the shadow on the household and the son that went to sea.")

What is it about this place, I wondered, that makes people spontaneously break into verse? But then, as I looked out past the palms to the ocean and, in the distance, the silhouette of Mount Liamuiga, I realized that I already had my answer.

Later that night, I took a taxi to the Double Deuce, a beach shack with a four-star chef, formerly of the Montpelier. I sat at the bar with a hilarious collection of locals: a Rastafarian mystic on my left, a pastry chef on my right. A guy who was in the process of sailing across the Atlantic moored his boat at an adjacent dock, and as he walked in, everyone cheered and the bartender called out, "Hey—we weren't expecting you for another six weeks!"

I had dinner with a welcoming group of locals, many of whom worked at the Four Seasons, whose hotel and golf course dominate Nevis's western coast. It was feared, when the resort was erected in 1991, that the Nevisians would lose the tranquillity that characterizes the island. In the nearly two decades since, however, the islanders have come to accept the resort, perhaps because it fits so subtly into the environment and perhaps because, as one woman told me, "There is nothing wrong with people having jobs here."

On my last day on Nevis before returning to St. Kitts, I caught the shuttle from the Montpelier down to the hotel's private beach. One major difference between St. Kitts and Nevis is in the administration of public lands: On St. Kitts, there are no private beaches, so that even in front of the Marriott travelers should expect to encounter beach peddlers hawking cigars and hair-braidings and "Kittitian massages." On Nevis, on the other hand, some beaches are off-limits to the public, and the Montpelier owns two acres of what may be the best: Pinney's. The rest of the Montpelier's guests all had plans for the day, so I had the place to myself, except for the man who patiently tended the private bar.