I was just getting near the turn into Side Path, accordingly, after a couple of mortal hours' hard riding, and once more in sight of the harbour beneath, when the three of them overtook me, having managed to reach the top of Diana's Peak, as they meant. The first lieutenant was full of the grand views on the way, with the prospect off the peak, where one saw the sea all round St Helena like a ring, and the sky over you as blue as blue water. "But what do you think we saw on the top, Mr Collins?" asked one of the urchins at me--a mischievous imp he was himself, too, pockmarked, with hair like a brush, and squinted like a ship's two hawse-holes. "Why, Mister Snelling," said I, gruffly--for I knew him pretty well already, and he was rather a favourite with me for his sharpness, though you may suppose I was thinking of no trifles at the moment--"why, the devil perhaps!" "I must say I thought at first it was him, sir," said the reefer, grinning; "'twas a black Nigger, though, sir, sitting right on the very truck of it with his hands on his two knees, and we'd got to shove him off before we could dig our knives into it!" "_By_ the Lord Harry!" I rapped out, "the very thing that--" "'Twas really the case, though, Mr Collins," said the first lieutenant; "and I thought it curious, but there are so many Negroes in the island." "If you please, sir," put in the least of the mids, "perhaps they haven't all of 'em room to meditate, sir!" "Or sent to the masthead, eh, Roscoe?" said Snelling. "Which you'll be, sirrah," broke in the first lieutenant, "the moment I get aboard, if you don't keep a small helm!" We were clattering down over James Town by this time, the sun blazing red off the horizon, into it and the doors of the houses, and the huge hull and spars of the Conqueror almost blocking up the harbour, as she lay anchored outside the Indiamen. The evening gun fired as we pulled aboard the Hebe, which immediately got under weigh by order, although Lord Frederick was not come down yet; but it fell to her turn that night to supply a guard-boat to windward, and she stood up under full sail round Sugar-Loaf Point, just as the dusk fell like a shadow over the island.