“I know, I know. I say, Mr Cringle, you are appointed to the Firebrand, do you know that?”--I did not know it, and began to fear my cruise on shore was all up.--“But I don’t look for her from Havanna for a month; so leave your address with L----, that you may get the order to join when she does come.” It appeared that I had seen the worst of the agent, for he gave me a very kind invitation to stay some days with him, and drove me home in his ketureen, a sort of sedan chair with the front and sides knocked out, and mounted on a gig body. Before dinner we were lounging about the piazza, and looking down into the street, when a negro funeral came past, preceded by a squad of drunken black vagabonds, singing and playing on gumbies, or African drums, made out of pieces of hollow trees, about six feet long, with skins braced over them, each carried by one man, while another beats it with his open hands. The coffin was borne along on the heads of two negroes--a negro carries every thing on his head, from a bale of goods to a wine-glass or tea-cup. It is a practice for the bearers, when they come near the house of any one against whom the deceased was supposed to have had a grudge, to pretend that the coffin will not pass by, and in the present case, when they came opposite to where we stood, they began to wheel round and round, and to stagger under their load, while the choristers shouted at the top of their lungs. “We beg you, shipmate, for come along--do, broder, come away;” then another reel. “What, you no wantee go in a hole, eh? You hab grudge against somebody lif here, eh?”--Another devil of a lurch “Massa----‘s housekeeper, eh? Ah, it must be!”--A tremendous stagger--“Oh, Massa----, dollar for drink; someting to hold play [negro wake] in Spring-path, [the negro burying-ground;] Bediacko say him won’t pass ‘less you give it.” And here they began to spin round more violently than before; but at the instant a drove of bullocks coming along, they got entangled amongst them, and down went body and bearers and all, the coffin bursting in the fall, and the dead corpse, with its white grave-clothes and black face, rolling over and over in the sand amongst the feet of the cattle. It was immediately caught up, however, bundled into the coffin again, and away they staggered, drumming and singing as loudly as before.