Fort George, another fortification equally powerless nowadays either for attack or defence, lay on the right; and looking beyond, over a series of terraces of villas and gardens, and negro provision grounds, the open sea could be seen stretching away to the Boccas of the Gulf of Paria and the Serpent Passage which divides the island of Trinidad from the main coast of British Guiana.
I could see, on arriving at this point, the English mail steamer coaling at the jetty below, with gangs of negroes and negresses busily engaged going to and fro along the wharf, carrying baskets of fuel on their heads; so, setting spurs to Master Prince, I made him race down the road as if a drove of wild bulls were after him, heedless of every obstacle in my path and only intent on reaching the quay.
"Top, Mass' Tom, 'top!" shouted out Jake behind me, putting Dandy into a heavy trot.

"De road am berry slippy, an' you go one big fall soon!" But, Jake's caution was all in vain, for the steamer was there, and the passengers had probably already landed with my father amongst them, so there was every reason for my hastening on quickly.
I did not waste time, I can assure you! Cantering past groups of coloured people of every hue, from the palest copper tint up to the jettiest black, all returning to their huts in the hills after disposing of their market produce for the day and each giving me the customary patois greeting, "Bon j'u', massa, ken nou' ?" as I raced by them; past cottage doors and overseers' houses I went on at full speed, until I came to a long street that sloped down with a gradient like that of one of those sharp-pointed, heavy-gabled roofs of Queen Anne's time.
Even this, however, did not arrest my headlong course.
I was much too anxious to get below to the harbour side before the coaling of the steamer should be completed and the vessel start off again on her intercolonial trip amongst the islands to deliver her mails from Europe; and so, deaf to all my darkey attendant's prayers and expostulations, I hit poor Prince over the head with my supple jack and galloped as if a drove of wild bulls was after me down the dangerous incline, which was paved with smooth slippery fixed boulders to make it all the more treacherous to a horse's hoofs unless rough-shod.
"Golly, Mass' Tom, you break um neck for suah," I heard the terrified Jake call out far away in my rear; but I could not have stopped then even had I wished, Prince having too much "way" on him.
"Come on!" I cried.

"Come on!" These were the last words I remember uttering, for at that moment, the pony, with me clinging to his back with might and main, was tearing down the slope at a terrific pace; and then, just as we were passing the school-house at the corner of the market-place, some boys who were outside suddenly set up a loud yell at something or other.
This frightened Prince so that he shied.
The pony bounded up in the air first like a goat, lifting all his legs from the ground at once in true buck-jumper fashion, after which he came to a dead halt as if he had been shot; and then, placing his fore-feet straight out before him he sent me flying over his head right through the window of a little shop opposite with such force that I was picked up insensible..