Cantering past groups of coloured people of every hue, from the palest
copper tint up to the jettiest black, all returning to their huts in the
hills after disposing of their market produce for the day and each
giving me the customary patois greeting, "Bon j'u', massa, ken nou'?" as
I raced by them; past cottage doors and overseers' houses I went on at
full speed, until I came to a long street that sloped down with a
gradient like that of one of those sharp-pointed, heavy-gabled roofs of
Queen Anne's time.
Even this, however, did not arrest my headlong course.
I was much too anxious to get below to the harbour side before the
coaling of the steamer should be completed and the vessel start off
again on her intercolonial trip amongst the islands to deliver her mails
from Europe; and so, deaf to all my darkey attendant's prayers and
expostulations, I hit poor Prince over the head with my supple jack and
galloped as if a drove of wild bulls was after me down the dangerous
incline, which was paved with smooth slippery fixed boulders to make it
all the more treacherous to a horse's hoofs unless rough-shod.
"Golly, Mass' Tom, you break um neck for suah," I heard the terrified
Jake call out far away in my rear; but I could not have stopped then
even had I wished, Prince having too much "way" on him.
"Come on!" I cried. "Come on!"
These were the last words I remember uttering, for at that moment, the
pony, with me clinging to his back with might and main, was tearing down
the slope at a terrific pace; and then, just as we were passing the
school-house at the corner of the market-place, some boys who were
outside suddenly set up a loud yell at something or other.
This frightened Prince so that he shied.
The pony bounded up in the air first like a goat, lifting all his legs
from the ground at once in true buck-jumper fashion, after which he came
to a dead halt as if he had been shot; and then, placing his fore-feet
straight out before him he sent me flying over his head right through
the window of a little shop opposite with such force that I was picked
up insensible.