It was the night before Beauregard’s big fight, time for his final preparations. Jo said I could come and watch but – he laid a black, sea-scoured finger to his lips – ‘no fool questions’. We left the lights of Vauclin and walked inland. The music from the Saturday night baldoudou faded. Jo began to sing. He would croon a few lines in his impenetrable Creole, and then it would be the turn of Georges and me to come in with the refrain:

Beauregard, Beauregard, Beauregay,
Li bougé comme cou z’éclay …

Beauregard himself was silent. He sat in state in a small cane-stem cage covered with a red cloth. Jo carried the cage with great care, despite all the rum he’d drunk.

Beauregard was a five-year-old fighting cock. This is a good age for a fighter: age was now part of his prowess. He was a zinga – a speckled grey – of Venezuelan extraction. Here in Martinique the cocks of Latin America are highly prized. They are nimble and cunning, très méchant. They are real coq gime – the Creolization of ‘game cock’ – as opposed to the barnyard mongrels that form the staple of West Indian cocking. Beauregard weighed in at about three pounds and, according to the song we sang, moved like a flash of lightning. He was the pride of Georges, his owner, and of Jo, who was the skipper of Georges’s two boats and Beauregard’s handler and trainer.