He heard the "creole negro's" cart coming along, even as he reached the road; he heard also the chuckles and whoops with which the conveyer of her Majesty's mails urged on the flea-bitten, raw-boned creature that carried them; and then, the cart drew into sight and was pulled up suddenly as Julian emerged into the road.
"Hoop! Massa Sebastian, you give me drefful fright," the sable driver began, "thought it was your ghost, as I see you in Belize this berry morning----"
"So it would have been his ghost," remarked Julian, as he came close to the cart with the letter in his hand, "if you had happened to see him now. Meanwhile, kindly take this letter and put it in your mail-bag."
"Huah! huah!" grunted the negro, while he held out his great black hand for the missive and, opening the mouth of the bag which was in the cart behind him, thrust it in on the top of all the others he had collected on his route along the coast; "he get there all right about two o'clock this morning. But, massa, you berry like Massa Sebastian. In um white jacket you passy well for um ghost or brudder."
"So they tell me," Julian answered lightly. "But, you see, we happen to be cousins, and, sometimes, cousins are as much alike as brothers. My friend," he said, changing the subject, "are you a teetotaller?"
"Hoop! Huah! Teetotallum. Huah! Teetotallum! Yes, massa, when I've no money. Then berry good teetotallum. Berry good."
"Well, now see, here is some money," and he gave the man a small piece of silver. "Take a drink at All Pines as you go by; it will keep this limekiln sort of air out of your throat--or wash it down. Off with you, only take two drinks. Have the second when you get to Belize."
Profuse in thanks, the darkey drove off, wishing Julian good-night, while the latter's cheery, "Good-night, fair nymph," seemed to him so exquisite a piece of humour that, for some paces along the road, the former could hear him chuckling and murmuring in his musical bass: "Fair nymph. Hoah! Fair nymph. Hoah! Fair nymph. That's me."
"Now," Julian said to himself as he strolled along the road, "we shall see if Spranger comes to meet me as he said he would if I wanted his assistance. If he doesn't, then bang goes this one into the All Pines post-box to-morrow;" the "this one" being an exact duplicate of the letter which the negro postman had at that moment in his mail-bag.
"I'm getting incredibly cunning," Julian murmured to himself, "shockingly so. Yet, what is one to do? One must meet ruse with ruse and cunning with cunning, and I do believe Sebastian is as artful as a waggon-load of monkeys. However, if things go wrong with me, if I should get ill--Sebastian says the climate is bad and lays a good deal of stress on the fact, although other people say it's first-rate---or disappear, or furnish a subject for a first-class funeral, there is one consolation. Spranger, on not hearing from me, will soon begin to make inquiries and, as the novelists say, 'I shall not die unavenged.' That's something."