The noise of the rain increased, and there was still a little puff of wind now and then, so that the Padre, taking an alfombra, or small mat, used to kneel on, and placing it on the step where the folding doors opened inwards, took a cloak on his shoulders, and sat himself down with his back against the leaves, to keep them closed, as the lock or bolt was broken, and was in the act of swigging off his cupful of comfort, when a strong gust drove the door open, as if the devil himself had kicked it, capsized the Padre, blew out the lights once more, and scattered the brands of the fire all about us. Transom and I started up, the women shrieked; but before we could get the door to again, in rode little Reefpoint on a mule, with the doctor of the Firebrand behind him, bound, or lashed, as we call it, to him by a strong thong. The black servants and the females took them for incarnate fiends, I fancy, for the yells and shrieks they set up were tremendous. “Yo, ho!” sung out little Reefy; “don’t be frightened, ladies--Lord love ye, I am half drowned, and the doctor here is altogether so quite entirely drowned, I assure you.--I say, Medico, an’t it true?” And the little Irish rogue slewed his head round, and gave the exhausted doctor a most comical look. “Not quite,” quoth the doctor, “but deuced near it. I say, Captain, would you have known us? why, we are dyed chocolate colour, you see, in that river, flowing not with milk and honey, but with something miraculously like pea soup, water I cannot call it.” “But Heaven help us, why did you try the ford, man?” said Bang. “You may say that, sir,” responded wee Reefy; “but our mule was knocked up, and it was so dark and tempestuous, that we should have perished by the road if we had tried back for St Jago; so seeing a light here, the only indication of a living thing, and the stream looking narrow and comparatively quiet--confound it, it was all the deeper though--we shoved across.” “But, bless me, if you had been thrown in the stream, lashed together as you are, you would have been drowned to a certainty,” said the Captain. “Oh,” said little Reefy, “the doctor was not on the mule in crossing no, no, Captain, I knew better--I had him in tow, sir; but after we crossed he was so faint and chill, that I had to lash myself to him to keep him from sliding over the animal’s counter, and walk he could not.” “But, Master Reefpoint, why came you back? did I not desire you to remain on board of the Firebrand, sir?” The midshipman looked nonplussed. “Why, Captain, I forgot to take my clothes with me, and--and--in truth, sir, I thought our surgeon would be of more use than any outlandish Gallipot that you could carry back.” The good intentions of the lad saved him farther reproof, although I could not help smiling at his coming back for his clothes, when his whole wardrobe on starting was confined to the two false collars and a toothbrush. “But where is the young lady?” said the doctor.