citurn old root, and rarely opens
his rind; but latterly he talks a good deal about the earthquake; says
he's sure there'll be another awful one before an interval of forty
years has passed, and wants us to go away. No objection, however, to
coming back when the thing is over, and then waiting forty years for
another. Don't laugh, you Paddy Burns, for if ever the '_Tremblor_'
gives you one little shake, you'll jump higher than you did when that
ugly Frenchman ran you through your waistcoat pocket, and you thought it
was your midriff. Now, Tom Stewart and Don Stingo, what are you grinning
about? Your teeth will chatter so fast at the next quake that you won't,
either of you, be able to deliver a charge to the jury over a false
invoice, or suck another drop of old Antigua rum."

"But really, Piron," broke in the commodore upon this voluble harangue,
"do you give heed to these barkings of that old clerk?"

"Why, yes, Cleveland," replied Piron, with rather a grave manner, "I do;
and, moreover, my sweet wife Rosalie out yonder, who has never got over
her grief for the loss of our boy, regards every word old Clinker says
as so much prophecy; and the upshot of the business is, I have made up
my mind to leave the island."

"For where, my friend--back to France?"

"No. Since the war and the peace, with Bonaparte at St. Helena, France
is no place for an Englishman, even with a French father, and I am going
to try America."

"Truly, Piron, I am charmed to hear it. But what part of America?"

"Why, I've bought a fine sugar estate at a bargain in Louisiana, and
there we shall pass the remainder of our days."

"He! he!" sniggled Tom Stewart, while Don Stingo and Paddy Burns
cackled incredulously; but, at the same moment, Ring Finger Bill and
Nimble Jack, two jet-black persons, in loose striped gingham shirts
and bare feet, with an attempt at a grave expression of thick-lipped
coffee-coolers, the whites of their eyes turned up with becoming
decorum, and preceded by the old twig of a clerk, who seemed to
crackle in the sea-breeze as he again hung himself, stern on, to his
stool of a trunk, entered the cool counting-house, bearing trays,
fruits, and bottles, which they methodically arranged on the large
table.

"Massa! him want small, red, plump snapper, make mizzible brile?" said
Nimble Jack. "S'pose Massa Ossifa him pick shell of land-crab, wid crisp
pepper for salad?"

"No, no! Put those cool water-monkeys on the table and