with Lieutenant Jennings leading.
Murray could not go, but Archy Gordon got leave; his services, as he
told his friends, not being absolutely required. They wisely landed in
shore-boats, thus escaping a drenching from the surf, and were hauled up
the shingly beach by a number of shouting, bawling, dark-skinned
natives, who handed them over to an equally vociferous crowd of
muleteers and donkey boys, assembled in readiness with their beasts of
high and low degree, to carry travellers up the mountain. Amid the
wildest hubbub produced by the shouting, wraggling, jabbering of the
owners of the beasts, each man praising the qualities of his own animal
as he dragged it to the front, the naval party managed to mount; those
who could secure them, on horses, the rest on mules; donkeys being
despised, though attempts were made to thrust the midshipmen on them.
The tall lieutenant of marines had not secured his horse, which he chose
for its height, without a desperate struggle. A band of natives rushing
on him, one had hoisted his right leg across a mule, another shoving a
donkey's rein into his hands, while a third adroitly brought a pony
under his left leg, while kicking in the air; but the owner of the high
horse saw that his eye had been fixed on it, and being a big fellow came
to the rescue, and offering his shoulder as a rest, enabled the
lieutenant to spring clear of the mule and other beasts on to the one he
had chosen.

"Forward, my lads," he shouted in triumph, as he galloped to the front.
Amid an increased chorus of strange-sounding shrieks and cries, the
party, shouting and laughing themselves almost as loudly as their
attendants, set forward.

"Whoo! whoo!" sung out all the assembled natives in chorus, when the
muleteers, catching hold of the tails of their respective animals with
their left hands, began to urge them on by digging into their flanks the
points of the short goads held in their right hands.

"Arra burra! cara! cara cavache! caval!" screamed out the natives, and
on went the steeds, kicking and clattering through the pebble-paved
streets, well nigh sending some of their less experienced riders over
their heads, and dispersing to the right and left every one they
encountered.

"I say, we won't be after having these fellows at our heels all the
way," exclaimed Adair.

"Of course not," said Jack; "it would be a horrid bore."

"Be off with ye, now," cried Adair, to the natives; Jack and the rest
giv