procession in a dream. The figures and groups of men and women on the
side-walks, too, had a ghostly, furtive air. They seemed to the boy to
be whispering together and muttering. Now this was absurd; for what
with the blare of the postillion's horn, the clatter of hoofs, the
jolting and rumbling of wheels, the rattle of glass, our travellers had
all the noise to themselves--or all but the voice of the gale now rising
again for an afterclap and snoring at the street corners. Yet his
instinct was right. Many of the crowd _were_ muttering. These New
Englanders had no love to spare for a Collector of Customs, a fine
gentlemen from Old England and (rumour said) an atheist to boot. They
resented this ostent of entry; the men more sullenly than the women,
some of whom in their hearts could not help admiring its high-and-mighty
insolence.

The Collector, at any rate, had a crowd to receive him, for it was
Saturday evening. On Saturdays by custom the fishing-fleet of Port
Nassau made harbour before nightfall, and the crews kept a sort of
decorous carnival before the Sabbath, of which they were strict
observers. In the lower part of the town, by the quays, much buying and
selling went on, in booths of sail-cloth lit as a rule by oil-flares.
For close upon a week no boat had been able to put to sea; but the
Saturday market and the Saturday gossip and to-and-fro strolling were in
full swing none the less, though the salesmen had to substitute
hurricane-lamps for their ordinary flares, and the boy--now wide awake
again--had a passing glimpse of a couple of booths that had been wrecked
by the rising wind and were being rebuilt. He craned out to stare at
the helpers, while they, pausing in their work and dragged to and fro by
the flapping canvas, stared back as the coach went by.

It came to a halt on a level roadway some few rods beyond this bright