"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
sand-bank, 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 we 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.