“I can’t tell you, Jake,” I replied. “I have never yet tasted one.”
“Den you jest wait an’ see. Dey is splendiferous, Mass’ Tom, an’ beat cock-fightin’. Golly, I get you one, two, tree, five manacou to-morrer, dat ebber so nicer dan dat poor trash ob ’guana dat hangman tief Pomp catchee, you jest wait an’ see!”
“All right, Jake,” I said kindly, to appease his jealous feelings; for, he was very fond of me and thought that his rival had eclipsed him in my estimation. “I will come with you to-morrow, if my father doesn’t want me, and then we’ll hunt for manacous up the mountain.”
This promise delighted him, and very soon Jake regained his customary good-humour, satisfied with having prospectively outshone Pompey; for, he presently broke out with one of his happy African laughs, which told me as plainly as words the little unpleasantness of the past was now dismissed from his thoughts.
As we rode on, at first downwards and then up a steep hillside again, the path winding by the edge of a precipice most of the way, we came across further traces of the force of the recent storm. Large trees were at one place stretched across the road, their massive trunks having been rended by the lightning; while the sudden deluge of rain had channelled little streams through the red clay. These coursed along like so many independent rivulets, right under our horses’ hoofs, rippling onward light-heartedly, until they came to one of the many broad ditches or gullies, that intersected our track at intervals, the contents of which they swelled to such an extent that we frequently had great difficulty in fording them, the water reaching quite up to Prince’s girths, and the current being so strong as to almost sweep him off his legs.
The scenery on either hand was grand.
On the right, plantations of cocoa and nutmeg trees stretched up the slopes of hills, which all converged towards a central mountain peak that overtopped all the rest by many hundred feet. This was crowned by the extinct crater of a volcano, now filled with water and known as Le Grand Etang. On the left, were valleys and gorges of the richest green, with here and there a tall silk-cotton tree or graceful palm elevating itself above the other wood-nymphs, the smoke of charcoal burners dotting the landscape from amid the thickest part of the forest growth of green with curling wreaths of grey.
We soon reached a wide plateau just above Government House, where the best view in the whole island was to be obtained, above which towered the old battery on Richmond Hill, armed with obsolete and worm-eaten thirty-two pounders, once deemed sufficient protection for the Carenage or harbour below, which it commanded. Fort George, another fortification equally powerless nowadays either for attack or defence, lay on the right; and looking beyond, over a series of terraces of villas and gardens, and negro provision grounds, the open sea could be seen stretching away to the Boccas of the Gulf of Paria and the Serpent Passage which divides the island of Trinidad from the main coast of British Guiana.
I could see, on arriving at this point, the English mail steamer coaling at the jetty below, with gangs of negroes and negresses busily engaged going to and fro along the wharf, carrying baskets of fuel on their heads; so, setting spurs to Master Prince, I made him race down the road as if a drove of wild bulls were after him, heedless of every obstacle in my path and only intent on reaching the quay.
“Top, Mass’ Tom, ’top!” shouted out Jake behind me, putting Dandy into a heavy trot. “De road am berry slippy, an’ you go one big fall soon!”