"Shame!" said Jacob; "I thought you were above picking up such crumbs, Felix. But here is breakfast--so, come." We finished it; and as we were getting ready, I noticed Quacco and Massa Twig in earnest confabulation, both apparently like to split with suppressed laughter. At some of the latter's suggestions, our sable ally absolutely doubled himself up, while the tears were running over his cheeks. Immediately afterwards, Quacco began to busy himself, boring some of the small hard seeds of the sand-box tree with his pricker, and filling them with something; and then to poke and pare some pieces of Jacob's patent flake tobacco with a knife, stuffing it into the latter's tobacco-pouch. However, I paid no more attention to them, and we started; my cousin Teemoty driving me in a chartered gig. We shoved along at a brisk rate, close in the wake of Mr Twig's voiture, and followed by a _plump_ of black cavaliers--a beautiful little sumpter-mule, loaded with two portmanteaus, leading the cavalcade; while Mr Flamingo's servant Twister pricked a-head, for the twofold purpose of driving the mule and clearing the road of impediments, such as a few stray jackasses, or a group of negroes going to market, neither of whom ever get out of one's way. After proceeding about ten miles, the road wound into a cocoa-nut grove close to the beach; indeed, the beach _became_ the road for a good mile, with the white surf rolling in and frothing over the beautiful hard sand, quickly obliterating all traces of the wheels. Macadam was at a discount here. One fine peculiarity of the West India seas is, independent of their crystal clearness, they are always brimfull--no steamy wastes of slush and slime, no muddy tideways. And overhead the sea-breeze was whistling through the tall trees, making their long feather-like leaves rustle and _rattle_ like a thousand watchmen's alarms sprung in the midst of a torrent of rain, or a fall of _peas_. "Hillo! what is that?" as a cocoa-nut fell bang into the bottom of my gig, and bounded out again like a foot-ball. "Oh, only a cocoa-nut," said Twig, looking over his shoulder with the usual knowing twist of his mouth, but without pulling up. "Only a cocoa-nut! But it would have fractured a man's skull, I presume, if it had struck him." "A white man's certainly," quoth Flamingo, with all the coolness in life, as if it had fallen a hundred miles from me, in place of barely shaving the point of my nose: "But it _has not_ hit you--a miss is as good as a mile, you know; so suppose we go and bathe until they get dinner ready yonder. Let us send the boys on to the tavern to order dinner. We are within two miles of it, Jacob--eh?"