At last, after the sun had gone down, and it was ill picking our way among logs and ground-creepers, we were aware of lights; and soon found ourselves again in civilisation, and that of no mean kind.  A large and comfortable house, only just rebuilt after a fire, stood among the palm-trees, between the sea and the lagoon; and behind it the barns, sheds, and engine-houses of the coco-works; and inside it a hearty welcome from a most agreeable German gentleman and his German engineer.  A lady’s hand—­I am sorry to say the lady was not at home—­was evident enough in the arrangements of the central room.  Pretty things, a piano, and good books, especially Longfellow and Tennyson, told of cultivation and taste in that remotest wilderness.  The material hospitality was what it always is in the West Indies; and we sat up long into the night around the open door, while the surf roared, and the palm trees sighed, and the fireflies twinkled, talking of dear old Germany, and German unity, and the possibility of many things which have since proved themselves unexpectedly most possible.  I went to bed, and to somewhat intermittent sleep.  First, my comrades, going to bed romping, like English schoolboys, and not in the least like the effeminate and luxurious Creoles who figure in the English imagination, broke a four-post bedstead down among them with hideous roar and ruin; and had to be picked up and called to order by their elders.  Next, the wind, which ranged freely through the open roof, blew my bedclothes off.  Then the dogs exploded outside, probably at some henroost-robbing opossum, and had a chevy through the cocos till they tree’d their game, and bayed it to their hearts’ content.  Then something else exploded—­and I do not deny it set me more aghast than I had been for many a day—­ exploded, I say, under the window, with a shriek of Hut-hut-tut-tut, hut-tut, such as I hope never to hear again.  After which, dead silence; save of the surf to the east and the toads to the west.  I fell asleep, wondering what animal could own so detestable a voice; and in half an hour was awoke again by another explosion; after which, happily, the thing, I suppose, went its wicked way, for I heard it no more.

I found out the next morning that the obnoxious bird was not an owl, but a large goat-sucker, a Nycteribius, I believe, who goes by the name of jumby-bird among the English Negroes:  and no wonder; for most ghostly and horrible is his cry.  But worse:  he has but one eye, and a glance from that glaring eye, as from the basilisk of old, is certain death:  and worse still, he can turn off its light as a policeman does his lantern, and become instantly invisible:  opinions which, if verified by experiment, are not always found to be in accordance with facts.  But that is no reason why they should not be believed.

In St. Vincent, for instance, the Negroes one evening rushed shrieking out of a boiling-house, ’Oh!  Massa Robert, we all killed.  Dar one great jumby-bird come in a hole a-top a roof.  Oh!  Massa Robert, you no go in; you killed, we killed,’ etc. etc.  Massa Robert went in, and could see no bird.  ’Ah, Massa Robert, him darky him eye, but him see you all da same.  You killed, we killed,’ etc.  Da capo.