Tom bore his hammering for some time, when, getting a fair lick at Sambo, he sent him spinning away ten yards off with a blow of his ox-like fist. Sambo looked very much astonished, scarcely comprehending at first whence the blow had come, but it had the effect of teaching him, I suspect, for the future, to respect the arm of a British tar, and of putting an end to the combat, which, I fain must own, did not redound much to the credit of my brother-officer.
“Come, sir,” quoth honest Tom, seizing him by the leg, “just let me hoist you aboard this here animal, you’ll be more comfortable-like than kicking away here on the ground.”
Robson made no objection, but looked up with a smiling aspect in Tom’s face.
“Yeo-ho! heave-ho!” sang out my follower, and the lieutenant was quickly seated on the back of the quadruped, though, I suspect, he sat there with no great amount of comfort, for he held on tightly by the pommel with both hands, as if he expected soon to be tossed off again. Perhaps he had in his recollection the occurrence of some such accident in former times.
After this there was a general cry of “Heave ahead, my hearties, heave ahead!” And we all mounted as best we could. Our two black guards got on their steeds in no very good-humour with affairs in general, and us in particular, though their mules were the greatest sufferers.
How the authorities could suppose that two niggers, albeit armed with the longest hangers, and the biggest pistols ever used, could keep in order a party of half-drunken British officers rendered reckless by vexation, I do not know. It made us fancy that they had very few men to spare for any service but that of actual warfare.
They had our word that we would not run away, but certainly we had given no pledges that we would not indulge ourselves in any frolic which might be suggested to our fertile imaginations.
The word at last was given, and off set our cavalcade from the town of Cape François, the negroes shouting and the mules kicking and snorting and making all sorts of wonderful noises. We did not leave the place with any especial regret, but we should have done so had we known where we were going. Robson, whose head was pretty strong, soon recovered his equilibrium, and he, Delisle, O’Driscoll, and I rode together. I am no great hand at describing scenery. I remember it was wild in the extreme—blue ranges of hills and deep valleys, and plains partly cultivated, but mostly left in a state of nature overgrown with giant ceybas, between which were seen in rich profusion every species of parasitical plant twining and twisting and hanging in drooping wreaths, which monkeys converted into swings, while humming-birds at the pendant ends built their tiny nests. Then there were mango thickets, which as we journeyed among them, with their dense foliage, shut out the view on every side, and tall palm-trees towering up proudly here and there in the plain. There were rice and sugar plantations also, and their houses of one storey and red-tiled roofs and broad verandahs, and gangs of negroes as they trudged, laughing and shouting, to their work at the baking-house or mills for crushing the canes, and in the wide savannahs there were cattle grazing and herds of long-eared, fine mules, which put our sorry steeds to shame.
“I say, this is terribly slow work,” quoth O’Driscoll, ranging up alongside me; “what do you say to giving our nigger friends the go-by? We can’t come to much harm. We’ve got the bearings of Ou Trou, I fancy—indeed, I don’t think that there is any other town in that direction. At all events, we may meet with some adventure, and it will be pleasanter than jogging along at this rate.”
The proposal was one which jumped amazingly with the fancy of all the party. We had not long to wait before we had an opportunity of putting our scheme into execution. We four were ahead of the rest of the party. Suddenly we came upon a spot where four roads branched off in different directions.