"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.
I had never slept on shore out of Kingston before; the night season in the
country in dear old England, we all know, is usually one of the deepest
stillness--here it was any thing but still;--as the evening closed in,
there arose a loud humming noise, a compound of the buzzing, and chirping,
and whistling, and croaking of numberless reptiles and insects, on the
earth, in the air, and in the water. I was awakened out of my first sleep
by it, not that the sound was disagreeable, but it was unusual; and every
now and then a beetle, the size of your thumb, would bang in through the
open window, cruise round the room with a noise like a humming--top, and
then dance a quadrille with half--a--dozen bats; while the fire--flies
glanced like sparks, spangling the folds of the muslin curtains of the
bed.
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