I found the party congregated in the piazza around Mr Fyall, who was passing his jokes, without much regard to the feelings of his guests, and exhibiting as great a disregard of the common civilities and courtesies of life as can well be imagined. One of the party was a little red-faced gentleman, Peregrine Whiffle, Esquire, by name who, in Jamaica parlance, was designated an extraordinary master in Chancery; the overseer of the pen, or breeding farm, in the great house as it is called, or mansionhouse of which Mr Fyall resided, and a merry, laughing, intelligent, round, red-faced man, with a sort of Duncan Knockdunder nose, through the wide nostrils of which you could see a cable’s length into his head; he was either Fyall’s head clerk, or a sort of first lieutenant; these personages and myself composed the party. The dinner itself was excellent, although rather of the rough and round order; the wines and food intrinsically good; but my appetite was not increased by the exhibition of a deformed, bloated negro child, about ten years old, which Mr Fyall planted at his elbow, and, by way of practical joke, stuffed to repletion with all kinds of food and strong drink, until the little dingy brute was carried out drunk. The wine circulated freely, and by and by Fyall indulged in some remarkable stories of his youth, for he was the only speaker, which I found some difficulty in swallowing, until at length, on one thumper being tabled, involving an impossibility, and utterly indigestible, I involuntarily exclaimed, “by Jupiter!” “You want any ting, massa?” promptly chimed in the black servant at my elbow, a diminutive kiln-dried old negro. “No,” said I, rather caught. “Oh, me tink you call for Jupiter.” I looked in the baboon’s face--“Why, if I did; what then?” “Only me Jupiter, at massa service, dat all.” “You are, eh, no great shakes of a Thunderer; and who is that tall square man standing behind your master’s chair?” “Daddy Cupid, massa.” “And the old woman who is carrying away the dishes in the piazza?” “Mammy Weenus.” “Daddy Cupid, and Mammy Weenus--Shade of Homer!” Jupiter, to my surprise, shrunk from my side, as if he had received a blow, and the next moment I could hear him communing with Venus in the piazza. “For true, dat leetle man-of-war buccra must be Obeah man: how de debil him come to sabe dat it was stable-boy Homer who broke de candle shade on massa right hand, dat one wid de piece broken out of de edge?” and here he pointed towards it with his chin--a negro always points with his chin.