Anon, two negro servants, stretching and yawning, each with a candle in his hand, made their appearance, one in his shirt, with his livery coat hanging over his head, the cape projecting forward, and a sleeve hanging down on each side; the other had his coat on certainly, but stern foremost, and not another rag of any kind or description whatever, saving and excepting his Kilmarnock nightcap.
By the illumination which those ebony candlesticks furnished, I now could see about me. The room we were in was about twenty feet square, panelled, ceiled, and floored—it looked like a large box—with unpainted, but highly-polished hard-wood, of the colour of very old mahogany—handsomer than any oak panelling I had ever seen. There was a folding door that communicated with the front piazza, out of which we had scrambled—-another, that opened into a kind of back dining-hall, or large porch, and two on each hand, which opened into bedrooms. A sideboard was placed by the wall to the right, between the two bedroom doors, at which stood a tall and very handsome elderly gentleman, who, if I had not instantly known to be my uncle, from his likeness to my poor mother, I might, after the adventures of the day, and the oddities of messieurs my friends—the Twig of the Dream, and the Flamingo of Peaweep, Snipe, and Flamingo—have suspected some quiz or practical joke in the matter.
The gentleman, evidently not broad awake yet, was dressed in light-coloured kerseymere small-clothes, top-boots, white vest, and blue coat—he was very bald, with the exception of two tufts of jet-black hair behind his ears, blending into very bushy whiskers. His forehead was round and beetling—you would have said he was somewhat bullet-headed; had the obduracy of the feature not been redeemed by his eyebrows, which were thick, well arched, and, like his hair and whiskers, jet-black—and also by his genuine Irish sparklers, dark, flashing, and frolicsome.
His complexion was of the clearest I had seen in Jamaica—I could never have guessed that he had been above a few weeks from the "First gem of the Sea,"—and his features generally large and well formed. There was a playful opening of the lips every now and then, disclosing nice ivory teeth, and evincing, like his eyes, the native humour of his country.
"So, Master Murphy, you are there at last," said he.
"Yes, massa—yes, massa."
"Pray, can you tell me, Murphy, if any one has arrived here—any stranger come into the house while I slept;" then aside, as the players say, "or has it really and truly been all a drame?"
"No see noting, massa—nor nobody"—[yawn.]
"You didn't, oh—there, do you see any thing now?" said my uncle—as he took the candle out of the black paw, and put the lighted end, with all the composure in life, into Murphy's open mouth, where it shone through his cheeks like a rushlight in a winter turnip, until it burned the poor fellow, and he started back, overturning his sleepy coadjutor, Dennis, headlong on the floor. On which signal, Twig and Flamingo, who were all this time coiled up like two baboons below the sideboard, choking with laughter, caught Uncle Frenche by the legs, a limb a piece, who thereupon set up a regular howl—"ach, murder! murder! it is abducted, and ravished, and married against my will I shall be—murder!"—as he in turn capsized over the prostrate negroes, and all was confusion and vociferation once more—until my two travelling friends, who had cleverly slipped out of the mêlée, while my uncle was clapperclawing with his serving-men, returned from the pantry, whither they had betaken themselves; and now stood on the original field of battle, the landing-place of the stair, each with a lighted candle in his hand, and making believe to be in great amazement at the scene before them.
"Heyday," quoth Twig, "what's the matter, Master Frenche?—what uproar is this in the house?—we heard it at the Devil's Gully, two miles off, believe me."