black policeman--whose house was just being carried away by
the sea--appeared at last with a canoe; how we and our baggage got
over one by one in the hollow log without--by seeming miracle--being
swept out to sea or upset: how some horses would swim, and others
would not; how the Negroes held on by the horses till they all went
head over ears under the surf; and how, at last, breathless with
laughter and anxiety for our scanty wardrobes, we scrambled ashore
one by one into prickly roseau, re-saddled our horses in an
atmosphere of long thorns, and then cut our way and theirs out
through scrub into the Cocal;--all this should not be written in
these pages, but drawn for the benefit of Punch, by him who drew the
egg-stealing frog--whose pencil I longed for again and again amid
the delightful mishaps of those forest rambles, in all of which I
never heard a single grumble, or saw temper lost for a moment. We
should have been rather more serious, though, than we were, had we
been aware that the river-god, or presiding Jumby, of the Doubloon
was probably watching us the whole time, with the intention of
eating any one whom he could catch, and only kept in wholesome awe
by our noise and splashing.

At last, after the sun had gone down, and it was ill picking our way
among logs and ground-creepers, we were aware of lights; and soon
found ourselves again in civilisation, and that of no mean kind. A
large and comfortable house, only just rebuilt after a fire, stood
among the palm-trees, between the sea and the lagoon; and behind it
the barns, sheds, and engine-houses of the coco-works; and inside it
a hearty welcome from a most agreeable German gentleman and his
German engineer. A lady's hand--I am sorry to say the lady was not
at home--was evident enough in the arrangements of the central room.
Pretty things, a piano, and good books, especially Longfellow and
Tennyson, told of cultivation and taste in that remotest wilderness.
The material hospitality was what it always is in the West Indies;
and we sat up long into the night around the open door, while the
surf roared, and the palm trees sighed, and the fireflies twinkled,
talking of dear old Germany, and German unity, and the possibility
of many things which have since proved themselves unexpectedly most
possible. I went to bed, and to somewhat intermittent sleep.
First, my comrades, going to bed romping, like English schoolboys,
and