“Oh! here comes Uncle Banou. Well, my good Banou, what news of your master?” said Madame Piron, as she put out her hand to the black, who raised it respectfully to his lips.
“He will be here with his friends at sunset, eh! And Mademoiselle Rosalie must place the gentlemen’s things in their rooms, and see that the billiard-house has some cots made ready in it.”
“Nothing more?”
“No, madame.”
“Allons! Rosalie, we have no time to lose.”
Winding through the mazes of the tropical forest, over the broken stony road, leading through a brilliant labyrinth of wild fig and acacia, plume-like palms, white shafts of silk and cotton, and lance-wood, mahogany, and ebony, parasitical plants in green and red, with endless varieties of gay flowers strung and laced in superb festoons on trunk and branch; singing birds and paroquets making the forest alive; while, mingled with the delicious fragrance of orange-blossoms, cinnamon, and pimento, the fresh breeze wheeled through clump and 234 leaf, changing the hues of plant and flower from white to crimson, green, purple, and gold, as Nature painted them in gorgeous dyes.
Through this brilliant vegetation, along the uneven road, came the sound of horses’ feet, with hearty shouts and laughter; and presently appeared a cavalcade, mounted on mules and horses, all making the forest ring with merriment.
Ahead came Tom Stewart, on a small, sure-footed pony; and beside him Mr. Tiny Mouse, reefer, on a high mule, with a scrubbing-brush mane, looking like a fly pennant at the mast-head of the frigate, kicking his little heels into the old mule, as if that mule minded it even so much as to shake his long ears! Then straggling in the centre were Darcantel, Stingo, and Paddy Burns; and behind them came a tall, muscular man, on a mettled barb, which he controlled by a touch of his little finger. And at his side, on the most diminutive of the donkey breed, with feet touching the ground, clung stout Jacob Blunt, the sailor, in a more dreadful trepidation than he had ever known on board his old teak-built brig, lying there in the Roads of Kingston; while the rear was brought up by Piron and Commodore Cleveland.
“Now, you little madcap, look sharp when we turn the curve of the mountain, and you’ll catch a peep at Escondido; and don’t you pinch that old mule again on her back, or she’ll pitch you up into that silk cotton-tree.”
“If it pleases Providence to restore me safely to my dear old ‘Martha Blunt,’ I’ll take my davy never to sit astride of any d–– brute on four legs again!” This mild vow came from the lips of Jacob Blunt, and he honestly meant every word he said.