one o'clock
I knew no one in Jamaica -- no one at all except the governor , Lord Mallow , and him I had fought with swords in Phoenix Park five years before . I had not known he was governor here . I came to know it when I first saw him riding over the unpaved street into Kingston from Spanish Town with his suite , ornate with his governorship . He was a startling figure in scarlet , with huge epaulets on his lieutenant-general 's uniform , as big a pot as ever boiled on any fire-chancellor , head of the government and of the army , master of the legislature , judging like one o'clock in the court of chancery , controller of the affairs of civil life , and maker of a policy of which he alone can judge who knows what interests clash in the West Indies . English , French , Spanish , and Dutch are all hereabout . All struggle for place above the other in the world of commerce and society , though chiefly it is the English versus the French in these days ; and the policy of the governor is the policy of the country . He never knows whether there will be a French naval descent or whether the blacks in his own island will do as the blacks in St. Domingo did -- massacre the white people in thousands .