However, our troubles were not over for that day; for we had not proceeded fifty yards on our way to our lodgings, when an ugly bloated drunken-looking white man, with great flabby yellow cheeks, that shook as he walked like flannel-bags full of jelly, and in a most profuse perspiration, driven forth, I make no doubt, by a glorious rummer of grog, came up to us, and touched both of us on the shoulder—most people are rather sensitive regarding a touch thereabouts, so we faced suddenly round.
"I warn you bote, gentlemen, to attend one coroner's inquest at Jacob Munroe's wharf."
"The deuce you do?" said I. "Pray, what authority have you for this, my fine fellow?"
"De coroner's warrant, sir," producing it.
"Oh, we are nailed, Mr Brail," quoth Don Felix. "Crowner's Quest law is not to be disputed—no use in kicking. So pray, my good man, do you want any more jurors?"
"Indeed I do, sare. You are de first I have warn as yet."
"Oh, then, do you see that red-faced gentleman coming round the corner there?"
"Yesh, I do," said the man.
"Then bone him instanter, or he will bolt." This was no less a personage than Jacob Twig again. The man on this made a detour, and took our friend in flank, but the moment Jacob saw him he seemed to suspect his object, and began to walk down the street very fast, followed by the constable. There was a narrow turning to the right, near to where we stood, that led amongst a nest of nanny houses, as they are called, inhabited by brown free people, which was quite closed up by a party washing clothes and a girl milking a cow beyond them. How Jacob was to escape, if his evil genius should prompt him to try this channel, I could not conceive. As yet his sense of propriety had only allowed him to get into a very fast walk. Shamming deafness, however, all the while, to the reiterated shouts of the constable, to "stand in de Kin's name;" but the moment he opened the lane, off he started, with the long skirts of his frogged coat streaming in the wind, and his little glazed hat blazing in the sun like a meteor, or the steel headpiece of one of Bonaparte's cuirassiers.
There was an old woman stooping down over her tub, right fronting him, that is, facing him in an Irish fashion, for she looked t'other way from him, and two younger ones, similarly employed on each side of her. How he was to clear them and their tubs, and the cow beyond, was the puzzle, as the projecting eaves of the two lines of small houses, whose inmates were thus employed, nearly met overhead. However, we were not left long in suspense. Massa Twig now quickened his pace, and clapping his hands on the old lady's shoulders, cleared her and her tub cleverly by a regular leap-frog, tipping the heads of the two young women on each flank with his toes, and alighted at the feet of the girl who was milking the cow, which had not time to start before he followed up the fun by vaulting on her back; and then charged down the lane through the tubs and over the prostrate constable, passing us like a whirlwind, the quadruped funking up her heels, and tossing the dry sand with her horns, as if startled by a myriad of gad-flies. Both Flamingo and I strained our eyes to follow him, as he flew along like smoke, careering down the lane that ended in the sea.