There chanced to be a festival in progress, which, judging from the date, may have been “King’s day,” a fete celebrated by the negroes with songs and dances.
A group of shouting youngsters set upon the boys, pelting them with little bags containing sugar and rice, also dust and snuff, that caused boisterous sneezing. The revelers began chanting an improvised song about les jeunes Kaintocks. This may have been good-natured chaff, but our young arksmen did not like it; no more did Napoleon, who was distressed by sneezing with a muzzle on his nose.
They got away from this first group of roisterers, and hastened toward the doctor’s house; but near the market they encountered a greater and much more formidable crowd, in fantastic dress, wearing masks and bearing grotesque effigies aloft on poles.
To eyes unused to such parades, the spectacle was a startling one. The maskers wore all sorts of frightful head-gear—cocks’ heads, with huge red combs and bills a foot long, lions’ heads and tigers’ heads, bulls’ heads and dogs’ heads, Indians, crocodiles, serpents with forked tongues; and all were crowing, growling, bellowing, barking, whooping and hissing, with an added chorus from scores of horns and conch-shells. The uproar, indeed, was incredible. In this fantastic mob our young friends found themselves suddenly engulfed, and became objects of most undesirable attention.
“Mira a los Kaintock malos!” (Look at these Yankee rascals!) cried a tipsy Spanish sailor, and immediately an eddy of maskers circled round them, bawling forth a song then much in vogue:—
“’Mericain coquin,
Bille en nanquin,
Voleur du pain,
Chez Miche d’Aquin!”
which, freely translated, signifies that the “Americans” are rogues who dress in homespun, steal bread from the bake-shop, and are all jail-birds! This was not complimentary—if the boys had understood it.