St.-Ange roused himself.
"Posson Jone'! make me hany'ow dis promise: you never, never, never will come back to New Orleans."
"Ah, Jools, the Lord willin', I'll never leave home again!"
"All right!" cried the Creole; "I thing he's willin'. Adieu, Posson Jone'. My faith'! you are the so fighting an' moz rilligious man as I never saw! Adieu! Adieu!"
Baptiste uttered a cry and presently ran by his master toward the schooner, his hands full of clods.
St.-Ange looked just in time to see the sable form of Colossus of Rhodes emerge from the vessel's hold, and the pastor of Smyrna and Bethesda seize him in his embrace.
"O Colossus! you outlandish old nigger! Thank the Lord! Thank the Lord!"
The little Creole almost wept. He ran down the tow-path, laughing and swearing, and making confused allusion to the entire personnel and furniture of the lower regions.
By odd fortune, at the moment that St.-Ange further demonstrated his delight by tripping his mulatto into a bog, the schooner came brushing along the reedy bank with a graceful curve, the sails flapped, and the crew fell to poling her slowly along.
Parson Jones was on the deck, kneeling once more in prayer. His hat had fallen before him; behind him knelt his slave. In thundering tones he was confessing himself "a plum fool," from whom "the conceit had been jolted out," and who had been made to see that even his "nigger had the longest head of the two."