"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 of 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 of me--a mischievous imp he was himself, too, pock-marked, 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 mast-head, 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 Jamestown 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 Indiaman. 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 Sugarloaf Point, just as the dusk fell like a shadow over the island. "The _Newcastle's_ boat was on the leeward coast that night, and one of our cutters was getting ready to lower, nearly off Prosperous Bay, to windward, while the frigate herself would hold farther out to sea. One of the master's mates should have taken the cutter; but after giving the first lieutenant a few hints as far as I liked to go, I proposed to go in charge of her that time, myself--which was laid to the score of my freshness on the station; and the mate being happy to get rid of a tiresome duty, I got leave at once.