I stood at the foot of the letter, as it were, and as I looked
towards the piazza, which was gaily lit up, I could see it was crowded
with male and female negroes in their holyday apparel, with their
wholesome clear brown--black skins, not blue--black as they appear in our
cold country, and beautiful white teeth, and sparkling black eyes,
amongst whom were several gumbie--men and flute--players, and John
Canoes, as the negro Jack Pudding is called; the latter distinguishable
by wearing white false faces, and enormous shocks of horsehair, fastened
on to their woolly pates. Their character hovers somewhere between that
of a harlequin and a clown, as they dance about, and thread through the
negro groups, quizzing the women and slapping the men; and at Christmas
time, the grand negro carnival, they don't confine their practical jokes
to their own colour, but take all manner of comical liberties with the
whites equally with their fellow bondsmen.
The blackamoor visitors had suddenly, to all appearance, broken off their
dancing, and were now clustered behind a rather remarkable group, who
were seated at supper in the dining--room, near to where I stood,
forming, as it were, the foreground in the scene. Mr Fyall himself was
there, and a rosy--gilled, happy--looking man, who I thought I had seen
before; this much I could discern, for the light fell strong on them,
especially on the face of the latter, which shone like a star of the
first magnitude, or a lighthouse in the red gleam--the usual family of
the overseer, the book--keepers that is, and the worthy who had been the
proximate cause of all my sufferings, the overseer himself, were there
too, as if they had been sitting still at table where I saw them now,
ever since I left them three weeks before--at least my fancy did me the
favour to annihilate, for the nonce, all intermediate time between the
point of my departure on the night of the cooper's funeral, and the
moment when I now revisited them.
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