"Then bone him _instanter_, or he will bolt." This was no less a personage than Jacob Twig again. The man on this made a detour, and took our friend in flank, but the moment Jacob saw him he seemed to suspect his object, and began to walk down the street very fast, followed by the constable. There was a narrow turning to the right, near to where we stood, that led amongst a nest of _nanny_ houses, as they are called, inhabited by brown free people, which was quite closed up by a party washing clothes and a girl milking a cow beyond them. How Jacob was to escape, if his evil genius should prompt him to try this channel, I could not conceive. As yet his sense of propriety had only allowed him to get into a very fast walk. Shamming deafness, however, all the while, to the reiterated shouts of the constable, to "stand in de Kin's name;" but the moment he opened the lane, off he started, with the long skirts of his frogged coat streaming in the wind, and his little glazed hat blazing in the sun like a meteor, or the steel headpiece of one of Bonaparte's cuirassiers. There was an old woman stooping down over her tub, right fronting him, that is, facing him in an Irish fashion, for she looked t'other way from him, and two younger ones, similarly employed on each side of her. How he was to clear them and their tubs, and the cow beyond, was the puzzle, as the projecting eaves of the two lines of small houses, whose inmates were thus employed, nearly met overhead. However, we were not left long in suspense. Massa Twig now quickened his pace, and clapping his hands on the old lady's shoulders, cleared her and her tub cleverly by a regular leap-frog, _tipping_ the heads of the two young women on each flank with his toes, and alighted at the feet of the girl who was milking the cow, which had not time to start before he followed up the fun by vaulting on her back; and then charged down the lane through the tubs and over the prostrate constable, passing us like a whirlwind, the quadruped funking up her heels, and tossing the dry sand with her horns, as if _startled_ by a myriad of gad-flies. Both Flamingo and I strained our eyes to follow him, as he flew along like smoke, careering down the lane that ended in the sea. "Why don't he throw himself off?" said I; "the frantic brute is making straight for the water--it will drown him if he don't." "Jump off, man--jump off," roared Don Felix. But in vain; for the next moment there was Jacob Twig of the Dream, in St Thomas in the East, flashing and splashing in the sea, cow and all, an Irish illustration of the fable of Europa. Presently both biped and quadruped were in deep water, when they parted company, and all that we could see was a glazed hat and a red face, and a redder face and a pair of horns, making for the shore again as fast as they could.