"De Fairywell no tell lie, massa—De Devil's Golly,[[1]] dat has been dry like one bone for tree mont, hab come down, massa—dat all."
[[1]] Gully—ravine or river course.
"Come down," said I; "I wish it had stayed up!"
"Ah!" said Twig,—"and we are to sleep here in the cold and damp, I suppose—the fellow's a fool, and must have got off the path into some puddle. We are a mile from the gully—let me see"—and before you could have turned, Massa Jacob was splashing up to the knees alongside of Massa Teemoty. However, he was right—it was only a streamlet—and we got across without much difficulty; but in ten minutes the roar of a large torrent, heard hoarse and loud above the sound of the rain, gave convincing proof that we were at length approaching the gully—moreover, that it was down, and that with a vengeance. We now found ourselves amongst a group of negroes, who had also been stopped by the swollen stream. There was a loud thundering noise above us on the left hand, which (we had now all alighted) absolutely shook the solid earth under our feet, as if in that direction the waters had been pitched from the mountain side headlong over a precipice. From the same quarter, although quite calm otherwise, a strong cold wind gushed in eddies and sudden gusts, as if from a nook or valley in the hill-side, charged with a thick, wetting spray, that we could feel curling and boiling about us, sometimes stronger and sometimes weaker, like the undulations of a London fog. Close to our feet we could hear the river tearing past us, with a great rushing and gurgling, occasionally intermingled with the rasping and crashing of trees and floating spars, as they were dashed along on the gushes and swirls of the stream; while every now and then the warm water (for so it felt in contrast with the cold damp night-breeze) surged a foot or two beyond its usual level, so as to cover us to the ankle, and make us start back; and immediately ebb again. It was some time, amidst this "groan of rock and roar of stream" before we could make out any thing that the negroes about us said.
"Hillo," cried Twig—to be heard by each other we had to shout as loud as we could—"hillo, friend Felix, here's a coil—what shall we do—sleep here, eh?"
"We shall sleep soft, then," roared his friend in reply.
"As how, my lord?"
"Why, you may have mud of all consistencies, and of any depth."
"True, water beds are all the fashion now, and possibly mud ones might be an improvement; but had we not better try back," I continued, as I really began to think it no joke remaining where we were all night.
"A good idea," said Twig.