A grim smile lit the usually saturnine face of Tomkins, the surly policeman; and indeed anyone could have been excused for merriment. For Sam's importance, his high-flown language, to which we cannot here venture to give outlet, and the quick way in which he flashed round upon the harmless Chinaman, was most amusing. However, Tom quickly silenced the little fellow. "Yo leab dis Chinaboy alone," he cried, looking fiercely at Sam, but showing his teeth in a grinning smile for all that. "Yo look to yoself, little man. If dere holes way in dere, p'raps yo fall into one; den lost fo' good. No Sam to be found. All de boys call out hooray! Yo get along, young feller." That set Tomkins grinning more than ever. To do the man but common justice, he was an excellent fellow at heart, though his taciturnity and the shortness and crispness of his remarks made people consider him to be surly. No one saw the humour of the thing sooner than he did, and no one was more ready to smile. He turned upon the two negroes a scowl which would have scared them, had they not been accustomed to the constable, "See here, you two sons of guns," he cried, "there'll be something bad happenin' ef we have more of your lip. Get in at it; we ain't here to listen to darkies chatterin' as if they was monkeys." Sam glowered upon the man, and looked as if he would be glad to do him an injury; but Tom gave vent to a roar, and, dragging his horses after him, stood to his full height within a foot of Tomkins. It looked for a moment as if there was to be a fracas, for the two men, white and black, glared at one another furiously; but no one could expect the jovial Tom to wear such an expression for long. He burst out laughing, and, swinging round, placed himself side by side with Tomkins. "Oh, yo heard dat?" he called out. "He tink us like monkeys. Den yo say, Massa Jim, who de most handsomest, Tom or Tomkins." But Jim was in no mood for jesting. He sent the huge Tom to the rear with an impatient movement of his hand, and then bade Sam push forward. A moment later he was following, holding his horse by the bridle. For the next half-hour silence again settled down upon the party, though in place of the sound of their voices there came the slither of hoofs on rocks, the crash of boulders falling, and now and again a sudden exclamation as a man just saved his animal from falling; for the gully which Sam had found and selected was rough, to say the least of it. Probably in the wet weather it was nothing but a watercourse. Now it displayed huge holes where the rains had washed the soil away, while every few feet the members of the party had to negotiate boulders, sometimes causing their animals to squeeze round them, and at others having to urge them over the obstruction. Finally they all arrived at the bottom, where they were thickly surrounded by jungle.