Little Rory Macgregor had all this time remained at the edge of the stream, squatted on his hams like a large bull-frog, and apparently, if we could judge from his action, shouting at the top of his voice; but it was all dumb show to us, or very nearly so, as we could not make out one word that he said.
Flamingo confronted him, assuming the same attitude. "See how he has doubled up his long legs—there, now—said the grasshopper to the frog," quoth Twig to me. Here friend Felix made most energetic signs, a-la Grimaldi, that he wanted some food and drink.
Rory nodded promptly, as much as to say, "I understand you;" indeed it appeared that he had taken the hint before, for the two men that we had seen ascend the mountain-road, now returned; one carrying a joint of roast meat and a roast fowl, and the other with a bottle in each hand.
The puzzle now was, "how were the good things to be had across?" but my friends seemed up to every emergency. In a moment Flamingo had ascended a scathed stump that projected a good way over the gully, with Twig's string and stone in his hand; the latter enabling him to pitch the line at Rory's feet, who immediately made the joint of meat fast, which Don Felix swung across, and untying it, chucked it down to us who stood below; the fowl, and the rum, and the bottle of lemonade, or beverage, as it is called in Jamaica, were secured in like manner.
"So," said our ally, "we shan't starve for want of food, anyhow, whatever we may do of cold." But we were nearer being released than we thought; for suddenly, as if from the giving way of some obstruction below that had dammed up the water in the gully, it ebbed nearly two feet, of which we promptly availed ourselves to pass over to the other side of the Devil's Gully. But, notwithstanding, this was a work of no small difficulty, and even considerable danger. Being safely landed, and having thanked Mr Macgregor, who owned a very fine coffee property in the neighbourhood, for his kindness, we mounted our vehicles once more, and drove rapidly out of the defile, now lit by the moon, and in a quarter of an hour found ourselves amongst the Works; that is, in the very centre of the mill-yard of Ballywindle.
CHAPTER VIII.
MY UNCLE.
Here, late as it was, all was bustle and activity; the boiling-house was brilliantly lighted up, the clouds of white luminous vapour steaming through the apertures in the roof; while the negroes feeding the fires, sheltered under the stokehole arches from the weather, and almost smothered amongst heaps of dry cane-stalks, or trash, as it is called, from which the juice had been crushed, looked in their glancing nakedness like fiends, as their dark bodies flitted between us and the glowing mouths of the furnaces. A little farther on we came to the two cone-roofed mill-houses, one of which was put in motion by a spell of oxen, the other being worked by mules, while the shouting of the drivers, the cries of the boilermen to the firemakers to make stronger fires, the crashing of the canes as they were crushed in the mills, the groaning and squealing of the machinery, the spanking of whips, the lumbering and rattling of wains and waggons, the hot dry axles screaming for grease, and the loud laugh and song rising occasionally shrill above the Babel sounds, absolutely confounded me.
We stopped at the boiling-house door, and asked the book-keeper on duty, a tall cadaverous-looking young man, dressed in a fustian jacket and white trowsers, who appeared more than half asleep, if the overseer was at home. He said he was, and, as we intended to leave our horses at his house, we turned their heads towards it, guided by one of the negroes from the mill.