JUMBY-BIRDS. 207 



Massa Eobert was not killed : bat lives still, to the great 

 benefit of liis fellow-creatures, Xegros especially. Xevertlie- 

 less, the Xegros held to their opinion. He might, could, 

 would, or should have been killed ; and was not that clear 

 proof that they were right ? 



After this, who can deny that the Xegro is a man and a 

 brother, possessing the same reasoning faculties, and exer- 

 cising them in exactly the same way, as three out of four 

 \Nhite persons ? 



But if the night was disturbed, pleasant was the waking 

 next morning; pleasant the sur2:)rise at finding that the 

 whistling and howling air-bath of tlie night had not given 

 one a severe cold, or any cold at all : pleasant to slip on 

 flannel shirt and trousers shoes and stockings were needless 

 and hurry down through a stampede of kicking squealing 

 mules, who were' bein^^ watered ere their dav's work be^jan, 

 under the palms to the sea ; pleasant to bathe in warm 

 surf, into which the four-eyes squattered in shoals as one ran 

 down, and the moment they saw one safe in the water, ran u}) 

 with the next wave to lie staring at the sky : pleasant to sit and 

 read one's book upon a log, and listen to the soft rush of the 

 breeze in the palm-leaves, and look at a sunrise of green and 

 gold, pink and orange, and away over the great ocean, and U) 

 recollect, with a feeling of mingled nearness and loneliness, 

 that there was nothing save that watery void between oneself 



