As soon as Twig and Flamingo came up, I saw that neither they nor Serjeant Quacco could contain themselves for laughter. The latter was scarcely able to sit his mule--at length he jumped, or rather tumbled, oft, and pulled Twister out by the legs; who, the instant he could stand, and long before he could see for the mud that filled his eyes, started up the road like a demoniac, shouting, "Obeah, Obeah!" which so frightened the sumpter-mule, that he was by this time alongside of, that she turned and came down, rattling past us like a whirlwind, until she jammed between the stems of two of the cocoa-nut trees with a most furious shock, when lo! the starboard portmanteau she carried burst and blew up like a shell, and shirts, trowsers, nightcaps, and handkerchiefs, of all colours, shapes, and sizes, were shot hither and thither, upwards and downwards, this side and that, until the neighbouring trees and bushes were hung with all manner of garments and streamers, like a pawnbroker's shop. Twig shouted, "There--that's your share of the joke, Felix--there goes your patent portmanteau with the Bramah lock--see if the very brimstones in which you gloried be not streaming like a commodore's broad pennant from the top of the orange tree. The green silk night-cap on the prickly pear--and the shirts and the vests, and the real bandanas--ha, ha, ha!" "Ay, ay," shouted Flamingo, who had dismounted and was endeavouring to catch the mule as she careered through the wood towards the sea, kicking and flinging in a vain attempt to disentangle herself from the other portmanteau, which had now turned under her belly, and the sumpter-saddle that hung at her side; "and there goes your kit, Jacob, an offering to Neptune bodily, mule and all"--as the poor beast dashed into the surf, after having threaded through the stems of the trees without farther damage. The cause of all this was no longer a mystery, for I had made my guess already; but presently I was enlightened, if need had been, by friend Quacco. He had, it appeared, with Mr Twig's sanction, charged certain of the pieces of patent tobacco in the _spleuchan_ with several small quantities of detonating powder, enclosed in the glass-brittle seeds of the sand-box, as a trap for Master Twister, who was suspected of making free with it--the issue, so far as he was concerned, has been seen; but in the hurry of coming away and packing up, instead of placing the bottle containing the powder in Mr Flamingo's gun-case, where it should have been, he hurriedly dropped it into his portmanteau, as Twister was packing it; so that when the sumpter mule jambed between the trunks of the trees after it took fright it exploded and blew up. "I say, Massa Twister, you never make free with my patent tobacco?"