“Dem you, ye, ye Jericho—ah so you bash my brokefast—eh? You no see me tick him into de gun before we yoke de mule, dem, eh? You tief you, eh?”
“No!” roared the other—“You Walkandyam, you hab no brokefast, you liard, at least I never see him.”
“Dem lie dat!” replied Walkandnyam—“look in de gun.” Jericho peered into it again.
“Dere, you son of a—” (I sha’n’t say what)—“dere, I see de red flannin wadding over de cartridge—Your brokefast!—you be dem!” roared Jericho.
And he made at him as if he would have eaten him alive.
“You be dem youshef!” shrieked Walkandnyam—“and de red wadding be dem!” as he took a screw, and hooked out, not a cartridge certainly, but his own nightcap, full of yams and salt fish, smashed into a paste by Jericho’s rammer.
In the frenzy of his rage, he dashed this into his opponent’s face, and they both stripped in a second. Separating several yards, they levelled their heads like two telescopes on stands, and ran butt at each other like ram-goats, and quite as odoriferous, making the welkin ring again as their flint-hard skulls cracked together. Finding each other invulnerable in this direction, they closed, and began scrambling and biting and kicking, and tumbling over and over in the sand; while the skipper and I stood by cheering them on, and nearly suffocated with laughter. They never once struck with their closed fists I noticed; so they were not much hurt. It was great cry and little wool; and at length they got tired, and hauled off by mutual consent, finishing off as usual with an appeal to us—“beg one feepenny, massa!”
At six o’clock we drove to Mr Pepperpot Wagtail’s. The party was a bachelor’s one, and, when we walked up the front steps, there was our host in person, standing to receive us at the door; while, on each side of him, there were five or six of his visitors, all sitting with their legs cocked up, their feet resting on a sort of surbase, above which the jealousies, or movable blinds of the piazza, were fixed.
I was introduced to the whole party seriatim—and as each of the cock legs dropped his trams, he started up, caught hold of my hand, and wrung it as if I had been his dearest and oldest friend.
Were I to designate Jamaica as a community, I would call it a handshaking people. I have often laughed heartily upon seeing two cronies meeting in the streets of Kingston after a temporary separation; when about pistol-shot asunder, both would begin to tug and rug at the right-hand glove, but it is frequently a mighty serious affair in that hissing hot climate to get the gauntlet off; they approach,—one, a smart urbane little man, who would not disgrace St James’s Street, being more kiln-dried and less moist in his corporeals than his country friend, has contrived to extract his paw, and holds it out in act to shake.