In a few seconds the motion ceased, and the noise gradually died away in hollow echoes in the distance--whereupon ensued such a crowing of cocks, cackling of geese, barking of dogs, lowing of kine, neighing of horses, and shouting of men, women, and children amongst the negro and coloured domestics, as baffles all description, whilst the various white inmates of the house (the rooms, for air and coolness, being without ceiling, and simply divided by partitions run up about ten feet high) were, one and all, calling to their servants and each other, in accents which did not by any means evince great composure. In a moment this hubbub again sank into the deepest silence--man, and the beasts of the field, and the fowls of the air, became mute with breathless awe, at the impending tremendous manifestation of the power of that Almighty Being in whose hands the hills are as a very little thing--for the appalling voice of the earthquake was once more heard growling afar off, like distant thunder mingling with the rushing of a mighty wind, waxing louder and louder as it approached, and upheaving the sure and firm-set earth into long undulations, as if its surface had been the rolling swell of the fathomless ocean. The house rocked, pictures of saints fell from the walls, tables and chairs were overturned, the window frames were forced out of their embrasures and broken in pieces, beams and rafters groaned and screamed, crushing the tiles of the roof into ten thousand fragments. In several places the ground split open into chasms a fathom wide, with an explosion like a cannon-shot; the very foundation of the house seemed to be sinking under us; and whilst men and women rushed like maniacs naked into the fields, with a yell as if the Day of Judgment had arrived, and the whole brute creation, in an agony of fear, made the most desperate attempts to break forth from their enclosures into the open air, the end wall of my apartment was shaken down; and falling outwards with a deafening crash, disclosed, in the dull grey mysterious twilight of morning, the huge gnarled trees that overshadowed the building, bending and groaning, amidst clouds of dust, as if they had been tormented by a tempest, although the air was calm and motionless as death. CHAPTER V.--The Piccaroon “Ours the wild life in tumult still to range.” Byron, The Corsair, I. 7. Some time after this, we once more returned to Carthagena, to be at hand should any opportunity occur for Jamaica, and we were lounging about one forenoon on the fortifications, looking with sickening hearts out to seaward, when a voice struck up the following negro ditty close to us: “Fader was a Corramantee, Moder was a Mingo, Black picaniny buccra wantee, So dem sell a me Peter, by jingo, Jiggery, jiggery, jiggery.” “Well sung, Massa Bungo,” exclaimed Mr Splinter; “where do you hail from, my hearty?” “Hiflo! Bungo, indeed! free and easy dat, anyhow. Who you yousef, eh?”