“Why, no, sir, I don’t think I shall want them; but if you will spare me Mr Cringle I will be obliged, in case I want any help.” We shoved off, and as the glowing sun dipped under Portland Point, as the tongue of land that runs out about four miles to the southward, on the western side of Port Royal harbour, is called, we arrived within a hundred yards of the Palisadoes. The surf, at the particular spot we steered for, did not break on the shore in a rolling curling wave, as it usually does, but smoothed away under the lee of a small sandy promontory that ran out into the sea, about half a cable’s length to windward, and then slid up the smooth white sand, without breaking, in a deep clear green swell, for the space of twenty yards, gradually shoaling, the colour becoming lighter and lighter, until it frothed away in a shallow white fringe, that buzzed as it receded back into the deep green sea, until it was again propelled forward by the succeeding billow. “I say, friend Bungo, how shall we manage? You don’t mean to swamp us in a shove through that surf, do you?” said Mr Treenail. “No fear, massa, if you and toder leetle man-of-war buccra, only keep dem seat when we rise on de crest of de swell dere.” We sat quiet enough. Treenail was coolness itself, and I aped him as well as I could. The loud murmur, increasing to a roar, of the sea, was trying enough as we approached, buoyed on the last long undulation. “Now sit still, massa, bote.” We sank down into the trough, and presently were hove forwards with a smooth sliding motion up on the beach--until grit, grit, we stranded on the cream-coloured sand, high and dry. “Now jomp, massa, jomp.” We leapt with all our strength, and thereby toppled down on our noses; the sea receded, and before the next billow approached, we had run the canoe twenty yards beyond high water mark. It was the work of a very few minutes to haul the canoe across the sandbank, and to launch it once more in the placid waters of the harbour of Kingston. We pulled across towards the town, until we landed at the bottom of Hanover Street; the lights from the cabin windows of the merchantmen glimmering as e passed, and the town only discernible from a solitary sparkle here and there. But the contrast when we landed was very striking. We had come through the darkness of the night in comparative quietness; and in two hours from the time we had left the old Torch, we were transferred from her orderly deck to the bustle of a crowded town. One of our crew undertook to be the guide to the agent’s house. We arrived before it. It was a large mansion, and we could see lights glimmering in the ground floor; but it was gaily lit up aloft. The house itself stood back about twenty feet from the street, from which it was separated by an iron railing.