"Come, you must get on, though, since we have not room to pass--no time to study natural philosophy," said Twig; and I once more fanned my horse into a gentle trot, with very much the sensation of one running through an unknown sound in the night, without either chart or pilot. After a little, I saw a cluster of _red_ fire-flies, as I thought, before us. "Oh, come along, I see now famously." "Oh massa, massa!"--Crack!--I had got entangled with a string of mules going to fetch a last turn of canes from the field; the red sparks that I had seen ahead having proceeded from the pipes in the mouths of the drivers. However there was no great damage done. The rain now began to descend in torrents, with a roar like a cataract.--"What uncommonly pleasant weather," thought I. "Why, Mr Twig, you see I am a bad pilot--so, do you think you have room to pass me now? for, to say the truth, I don't think I can see a yard of the road, and you know I am an utter stranger here." He could not pass, however, and at length I had to set Master Teemoty to lead the horse. Presently I heard a splash. "Hilloa, cousin Teemoty! where have you got to?" "De Fairywell no tell lie, massa--De Devil's Golly,[1] dat has been dry like one bone for tree mont, hab _come down_, massa--dat all." [1] Gully--ravine or river course. "Come _down_," said I; "I wish it had stayed _up_!" "Ah!" said Twig,--"and we are to sleep here in the cold and damp, I suppose--the fellow's a fool, and must have got off the path into some puddle. We are a mile from the gully--let me see"--and before you could have turned, Massa Jacob was splashing up to the knees alongside of Massa Teemoty. However, he was right--it was only a streamlet--and we got across without much difficulty; but in ten minutes the roar of a large torrent, heard hoarse and loud above the sound of the rain, gave convincing proof that we were at length approaching the gully--moreover, that it was down, and that with a vengeance. We now found ourselves amongst a group of negroes, who had also been stopped by the swollen stream. There was a loud thundering noise above us on the left hand, which (we had now all alighted) absolutely shook the solid earth under our feet, as if in that direction the waters had been pitched from the mountain side headlong over a precipice. From the same quarter, although quite calm otherwise, a strong cold wind gushed in eddies and sudden gusts, as if from a nook or valley in the hill-side, charged with a thick, wetting spray, that we could feel curling and boiling about us, sometimes stronger and sometimes weaker, like the undulations of a London fog. Close to our feet we could hear the river tearing past us, with a great rushing and gurgling, occasionally intermingled with the rasping and crashing of trees and floating spars, as they were dashed along on the gushes and swirls of the stream; while every now and then the _warm_ water (for so it felt