Chapter Seven.

Chapter Seven.Gathering Clouds.In spite of the declaration made by Captain Armstrong that he had identified his assailants by the heights, voices, and—dark as was the night—their features, Abel refused to be convinced. He had taken it into his head that Mary had denounced them to her former lover, and at each examination before the Old Devon magistrates he had sullenly turned away from the poor girl, who sat gazing imploringly at the dock, and hungering for a look in return.The captain was not much hurt; that is to say, no bones were broken. Pain he had suffered to a little extent, for there was an ugly slit in one ear, but he was not in such a condition as to necessitate his limping into court, supported by a couple of servants, and generally “got up” to look like one who had been nearly beaten to death.All this told against Abel and Bart, as well as the fact that the captain was of good birth, and one who had lately formed an alliance with a famous old county family. In addition, the prisoners were known to the bench. Both Abel and Bart had been in trouble before, and black marks were against them for wrecking and smuggling. They were no worse than their neighbours, but the law insists upon having scarecrows, and the constables did not hesitate to make every effort to hang the son of a notorious old wrecker and his boon companion.There was not a dissentient voice. Abel Dell and Bartholomew Wrigley were both committed for trial; and Mary made quite a sensation by rising in the court as the prisoners were about to be removed, and forcing her way to where she could catch her brother’s hand.“Abe,” she cried, passionately, “I didn’t. I didn’t, indeed. Say good-bye.”He turned upon her fiercely, and snatched his hand away.“Go to your captain,” he said, savagely. “I shall be out of the way now.”An ordinary woman would have shrunk away sobbing; but as Mary was flung off, she caught at Bart’s wrist, and clung to that.“Bart, I didn’t! I didn’t!” she whispered, hoarsely. “Tell him I wouldn’t—I couldn’t do such a thing. It isn’t true!”Bart’s face puckered up, and he looked tenderly down in the agitated face before him.“Well, lass,” he said, softly, “I believe—”“That you turned against us!” interposed Abel, savagely, for his temper, consequent upon the way matters had gone against him, was all on edge. “Come on, Bart; she’ll have her own way now.”A constable’s hand was on each of their shoulders, and they were hurried out of court, leaving Mary standing frowning alone, the observed of all.Her handsome face flushed, and she drew herself up proudly, as she cast a haughtily defiant look at all around, and was about to walk away when her eyes lighted upon the captain, who was seated by the magisterial bench, side by side with his richly-dressed lady.There was a vindictive glare in Mary Dell’s eyes as she encountered the gaze of Mistress Armstrong, the lady looking upon her as a strange, dangerous kind of creature.“Why should she not suffer as I suffer?” thought Mary. “Poor, weak, dressed-up doll that she is! I could sting her to the heart easy. How I hate her, for she has robbed me of a husband!”But the next moment the lady withdrew her gaze with a shiver of dread from the eyes which had seemed to scorch her; and Mary’s now lit upon those of Captain Armstrong, for he was watching her curiously, and with re-awakened interest.Mary’s face changed again its expression, as light seemed to enter her darkened soul.“He used to love me a little. He would not be so cruel as that. I offended him, because I was so hard and—cruel he called it. He would listen to me now. I will, I will.”She gazed at him fixedly for a moment, and then hurried from the court.“What a dreadful-looking woman, Jemmy!” whispered Mistress Armstrong. “She quite made me shudder. Will they hang her too?”“No, no,” he said, rising quickly and drawing a long breath. Then, recollecting himself, he sat down again as if in pain, and held out his hand to his wife, who supported him to the carriage, into which he ascended slowly.“Sorry for you, Armstrong; deuced sorry, egad,” said the senior magistrate, coming up to the carriage door. “Can’t help feeling glad too.”“Oh, Sir Timothy!” cried Mistress Armstrong, who was a seventeenth cousin.“But I am, my dear,” said the old magistrate. “Glad, because it will rid us of a couple of dreadful rascals. Trial comes on in three weeks. I wouldn’t get well too soon. Judge Bentham will hang them as sure as they’re alive.”He nodded and walked off, with his cocked hat well balanced on his periwig. Then the heavy lumbering carriage drove out of the quaint old town, with the big dumpling horses perspiring up the hills; while, as soon as they were away from the houses, Mistress Armstrong leaned back on the cushions with a sigh of relief.“I do hope the judge will hang them,” she said. “A pair of wicked, bad, cruel ruffians, to beat and half-kill my own dear darling Jemmy as they did. Oh, the cruel, cruel creatures! I could hang them myself! Does it hurt you anywhere now, my own sweetest boy?” she added, softly, as she passed her arm caressingly round her liege lord, who gave such a savage start that she shrank into the other corner of the carriage, with the tears starting to her eyes.“Don’t be such a confounded fool!” her “sweetest” Jemmy roared; and then he sat back scowling, for she had interrupted a sort of day-dream in which he was indulging respecting Mary Dell, whose eyes still seemed to be fixed upon his; and as his wife’s last words fell upon his ear they came just as he was wondering whether, if they met again, Mary would, in her unprotected state, prove more kind, and not so prudish as of yore.The honeymoon had been over some time.

In spite of the declaration made by Captain Armstrong that he had identified his assailants by the heights, voices, and—dark as was the night—their features, Abel refused to be convinced. He had taken it into his head that Mary had denounced them to her former lover, and at each examination before the Old Devon magistrates he had sullenly turned away from the poor girl, who sat gazing imploringly at the dock, and hungering for a look in return.

The captain was not much hurt; that is to say, no bones were broken. Pain he had suffered to a little extent, for there was an ugly slit in one ear, but he was not in such a condition as to necessitate his limping into court, supported by a couple of servants, and generally “got up” to look like one who had been nearly beaten to death.

All this told against Abel and Bart, as well as the fact that the captain was of good birth, and one who had lately formed an alliance with a famous old county family. In addition, the prisoners were known to the bench. Both Abel and Bart had been in trouble before, and black marks were against them for wrecking and smuggling. They were no worse than their neighbours, but the law insists upon having scarecrows, and the constables did not hesitate to make every effort to hang the son of a notorious old wrecker and his boon companion.

There was not a dissentient voice. Abel Dell and Bartholomew Wrigley were both committed for trial; and Mary made quite a sensation by rising in the court as the prisoners were about to be removed, and forcing her way to where she could catch her brother’s hand.

“Abe,” she cried, passionately, “I didn’t. I didn’t, indeed. Say good-bye.”

He turned upon her fiercely, and snatched his hand away.

“Go to your captain,” he said, savagely. “I shall be out of the way now.”

An ordinary woman would have shrunk away sobbing; but as Mary was flung off, she caught at Bart’s wrist, and clung to that.

“Bart, I didn’t! I didn’t!” she whispered, hoarsely. “Tell him I wouldn’t—I couldn’t do such a thing. It isn’t true!”

Bart’s face puckered up, and he looked tenderly down in the agitated face before him.

“Well, lass,” he said, softly, “I believe—”

“That you turned against us!” interposed Abel, savagely, for his temper, consequent upon the way matters had gone against him, was all on edge. “Come on, Bart; she’ll have her own way now.”

A constable’s hand was on each of their shoulders, and they were hurried out of court, leaving Mary standing frowning alone, the observed of all.

Her handsome face flushed, and she drew herself up proudly, as she cast a haughtily defiant look at all around, and was about to walk away when her eyes lighted upon the captain, who was seated by the magisterial bench, side by side with his richly-dressed lady.

There was a vindictive glare in Mary Dell’s eyes as she encountered the gaze of Mistress Armstrong, the lady looking upon her as a strange, dangerous kind of creature.

“Why should she not suffer as I suffer?” thought Mary. “Poor, weak, dressed-up doll that she is! I could sting her to the heart easy. How I hate her, for she has robbed me of a husband!”

But the next moment the lady withdrew her gaze with a shiver of dread from the eyes which had seemed to scorch her; and Mary’s now lit upon those of Captain Armstrong, for he was watching her curiously, and with re-awakened interest.

Mary’s face changed again its expression, as light seemed to enter her darkened soul.

“He used to love me a little. He would not be so cruel as that. I offended him, because I was so hard and—cruel he called it. He would listen to me now. I will, I will.”

She gazed at him fixedly for a moment, and then hurried from the court.

“What a dreadful-looking woman, Jemmy!” whispered Mistress Armstrong. “She quite made me shudder. Will they hang her too?”

“No, no,” he said, rising quickly and drawing a long breath. Then, recollecting himself, he sat down again as if in pain, and held out his hand to his wife, who supported him to the carriage, into which he ascended slowly.

“Sorry for you, Armstrong; deuced sorry, egad,” said the senior magistrate, coming up to the carriage door. “Can’t help feeling glad too.”

“Oh, Sir Timothy!” cried Mistress Armstrong, who was a seventeenth cousin.

“But I am, my dear,” said the old magistrate. “Glad, because it will rid us of a couple of dreadful rascals. Trial comes on in three weeks. I wouldn’t get well too soon. Judge Bentham will hang them as sure as they’re alive.”

He nodded and walked off, with his cocked hat well balanced on his periwig. Then the heavy lumbering carriage drove out of the quaint old town, with the big dumpling horses perspiring up the hills; while, as soon as they were away from the houses, Mistress Armstrong leaned back on the cushions with a sigh of relief.

“I do hope the judge will hang them,” she said. “A pair of wicked, bad, cruel ruffians, to beat and half-kill my own dear darling Jemmy as they did. Oh, the cruel, cruel creatures! I could hang them myself! Does it hurt you anywhere now, my own sweetest boy?” she added, softly, as she passed her arm caressingly round her liege lord, who gave such a savage start that she shrank into the other corner of the carriage, with the tears starting to her eyes.

“Don’t be such a confounded fool!” her “sweetest” Jemmy roared; and then he sat back scowling, for she had interrupted a sort of day-dream in which he was indulging respecting Mary Dell, whose eyes still seemed to be fixed upon his; and as his wife’s last words fell upon his ear they came just as he was wondering whether, if they met again, Mary would, in her unprotected state, prove more kind, and not so prudish as of yore.

The honeymoon had been over some time.

Chapter Eight.Mary Begins to Plan.Mary Dell was a girl of keen wits, but her education was of the sea-shore. Among her class people talked of the great folk, and men of wealth and their power—and not without excuse—for in those days bribery, corruption, and class clannishness often carried their way to the overruling of justice—the blind; and in her ignorance she thought that if she could win over Captain Armstrong to forgive her brother, the prosecution would be at an end, and all would be well.Consequently she determined to go up to the big house by Slapton Lea, and beg Mistress Armstrong to intercede with her husband, and ask his forgiveness; so one morning soon after the committal she set off, but met the carriage with the young married couple inside—Mistress Armstrong looking piqued and pale, and the captain as if nothing were the matter.The sight of the young wife side by side with the man who had professed to love her was too much for Mary, and she turned off the road and descended by the face of a dangerously steep cliff to the shingly shore; where, as she tramped homeward, with her feet sinking deeply in the small loose pebbles, her feeling of bitterness increased, and she felt that it would be impossible to ask that weak, foolish-looking woman with the doll’s face to take her part.No; she would go up to the house boldly and ask to see the captain himself; and then, with the memory of his old love for her to help her cause, he would listen to her prayer, and save her brother from the risk he ran.Then a mental cloud came over her, and she felt that she could not go up to the big house. It was not the captain’s, it washermother’s; and it would be like going to ask a favour of her. She could not do it; and there was no need.Captain Armstrong would come down to the shore any evening if she sent him the old signal, a scrap of dry sea-weed wrapped in paper. Scores of times she had done this when Abel had gone to sea in his boat, with Bart for companion; and Mary’s cheeks flushed at the recollection of those meetings.Yes; she would send him the old signal by one of the fishermen’s children.No; only if all other means failed. He was better now, and would be about. She would watch for him, and, as she called it, meet him by accident, and then plead her cause.And so a week glided away, and there was only about one more before the judge would arrive, and Abel and his companion be brought up in the assize court. Mary had haunted every road and lane leading toward the big house, and had met the captain riding and walking, but always with Mistress Armstrong, and she could not speak before her.There was nothing for it but to take the bold step, and after long hesitation that step was taken; the piece of sea-weed was wrapped up in paper, entrusted to a little messenger, and that evening Mary Dell left the cottage and walked round the western point towards Torcross, her cheeks flushed, her eyes unusually bright, and her heart full of care.She was not long in reaching the well-known spot—their old trysting-place, where the coarse sand was white, and the rocks which shut in the retired tiny cove rough with limpet, barnacle, and weed.This was the first time she had been there since James Armstrong had wearied of the prude, as he called her, and jilted her for his wealthy wife; and now the question arose; Would he come?The evening was glorious; but one thought filled Mary’s breast—Abel shut up behind the prison bars, still obdurate, and believing her false to him, and his faithful friend.The grey look on the face of the sea was reflected upon that of the watcher; and as the sky grew dark, so grew Mary Dell’s eyes, only that there was a lurid light now and then glowing in their depths.“He will not come,” she said. “He hates me now as I hate him, and—”She stopped short, for her well-trained ear caught the sound of a pebble falling as if from a height upon the strand below, and gazing fixedly above the direction of the sound, she made out something dark moving high up on the cliff track.Mary’s heart began to beat wildly, and she drew a long breath; but she would not let hope carry her away for a few moments till she could be certain, and then a faint cry of joy escaped her, but only to be succeeded by a chilling sensation, as something seemed to ask her why he had come.“I’m late,” cried a well-known voice directly after. “Why, Mary, just in the old spot. It’s like old times. My darling!” He tried to clasp her in his arms, his manner displaying no trace of his injuries; but she thrust him sharply away, half surprised and yet not surprised, for she seemed now to read the man’s character to the full.“Captain Armstrong!” she cried, hoarsely.“Why, my dear Mary, don’t be so prudish. You are not going to carry on that old folly?”“Captain Armstrong, don’t mistake me.”“Mistake you! No. You are the dearest, loveliest woman I ever saw. There, don’t be huffed because I was so long. I couldn’t get away. You know—” and he again tried to seize her.“Captain Armstrong—”“Now, what nonsense! You sent for me, and I have come.”“Yes. I sent for you because there was no other way of speaking to you alone.”“Quite right, my darling; and what could be better than here alone? Mary, sweet, it will be dark directly.”“Sir, I sent for you here that I might beg of you to save my brother and poor Bart.”“Curse your brother and Bart!” said the captain, angrily. “It was not their fault that they did not kill me. They’re better out of our way.”“Captain Armstrong—James—for our old love’s sake will you save them?”“No,” he cried, savagely. “Yes,” he added, catching Mary’s wrist; “not for our old love’s sake, but for our new love—the love that is to come. Mary, I love you; I always did love you, and now I find I cannot live without you.”“Captain Armstrong!”“James—your lover. Mary, you are everything to me. Don’t struggle. How can you be so foolish? There, yes, I will. I’ll do everything. I’ll refuse to appear against them if you wish me to. I’ll get them set free; but you will not hold me off like this?”“You will save my brother?”“Yes.”“And his friend?”“Yes.”“Then I will always be grateful to you, and pray for your happiness.”“And be mine, Mary, my love, my own?”“You villain! you traitor!” hissed Mary, as, taking advantage of a momentary forgetfulness, he clasped her in his arms and showered kisses on her lips, her cheeks, her hair.But Captain Armstrong had made a mistake. It was like caressing a Cornish wrestler. There was a sharp struggle, during which he found that Mary’s thews and sinews were, softly rounded as she was, strong as those of a man. She had been accustomed to row a boat in a rough sea by the hour together, and there was additional strength given to her arm by the indignation that made her blood course hotly through her veins.How dare he, a miserable traitor, insult her as he did?The question made the girl’s blood seem to boil; and ere he could place another kiss upon her lips Mary had forgotten brother, friend, the trial everything but the fact that James Armstrong, Mistress Armstrong’s husband, had clasped her in his arms; and in return she clasped him tightly in hers.They swayed here for a moment, then there, and the next the captain was lifted completely from the shingle and literally jerked sideways, to fall with a crash and strike his head against a piece of rock. Then a sickening sensation came over him and all seemed dark, while, when he recovered a few minutes later, his head was bleeding and he was alone, and afraid with his swimming head to clamber up the rough cliff path.“The cursed jade!” he muttered, as he recovered after a time, and went cautiously back after tying up his head, “I wish I could lay her alongside her brother in the gaol.”“Yes; I’ll save him,” he said with a mocking laugh, as he reached the top of the cliff and looked down at the faint light seen in the old wrecker’s cottage. “I’ll save him; and, in spite of all, it’ll be a strange thing if Mary Dell isn’t lost.“Curse her, how strong she is!” he said after a pause.“What shall I say! Humph! a slip on the path and a fall. I’m weak yet after the assault. Some one will have to plaster her dearest Jemmy’s head—a sickly fool!”

Mary Dell was a girl of keen wits, but her education was of the sea-shore. Among her class people talked of the great folk, and men of wealth and their power—and not without excuse—for in those days bribery, corruption, and class clannishness often carried their way to the overruling of justice—the blind; and in her ignorance she thought that if she could win over Captain Armstrong to forgive her brother, the prosecution would be at an end, and all would be well.

Consequently she determined to go up to the big house by Slapton Lea, and beg Mistress Armstrong to intercede with her husband, and ask his forgiveness; so one morning soon after the committal she set off, but met the carriage with the young married couple inside—Mistress Armstrong looking piqued and pale, and the captain as if nothing were the matter.

The sight of the young wife side by side with the man who had professed to love her was too much for Mary, and she turned off the road and descended by the face of a dangerously steep cliff to the shingly shore; where, as she tramped homeward, with her feet sinking deeply in the small loose pebbles, her feeling of bitterness increased, and she felt that it would be impossible to ask that weak, foolish-looking woman with the doll’s face to take her part.

No; she would go up to the house boldly and ask to see the captain himself; and then, with the memory of his old love for her to help her cause, he would listen to her prayer, and save her brother from the risk he ran.

Then a mental cloud came over her, and she felt that she could not go up to the big house. It was not the captain’s, it washermother’s; and it would be like going to ask a favour of her. She could not do it; and there was no need.

Captain Armstrong would come down to the shore any evening if she sent him the old signal, a scrap of dry sea-weed wrapped in paper. Scores of times she had done this when Abel had gone to sea in his boat, with Bart for companion; and Mary’s cheeks flushed at the recollection of those meetings.

Yes; she would send him the old signal by one of the fishermen’s children.

No; only if all other means failed. He was better now, and would be about. She would watch for him, and, as she called it, meet him by accident, and then plead her cause.

And so a week glided away, and there was only about one more before the judge would arrive, and Abel and his companion be brought up in the assize court. Mary had haunted every road and lane leading toward the big house, and had met the captain riding and walking, but always with Mistress Armstrong, and she could not speak before her.

There was nothing for it but to take the bold step, and after long hesitation that step was taken; the piece of sea-weed was wrapped up in paper, entrusted to a little messenger, and that evening Mary Dell left the cottage and walked round the western point towards Torcross, her cheeks flushed, her eyes unusually bright, and her heart full of care.

She was not long in reaching the well-known spot—their old trysting-place, where the coarse sand was white, and the rocks which shut in the retired tiny cove rough with limpet, barnacle, and weed.

This was the first time she had been there since James Armstrong had wearied of the prude, as he called her, and jilted her for his wealthy wife; and now the question arose; Would he come?

The evening was glorious; but one thought filled Mary’s breast—Abel shut up behind the prison bars, still obdurate, and believing her false to him, and his faithful friend.

The grey look on the face of the sea was reflected upon that of the watcher; and as the sky grew dark, so grew Mary Dell’s eyes, only that there was a lurid light now and then glowing in their depths.

“He will not come,” she said. “He hates me now as I hate him, and—”

She stopped short, for her well-trained ear caught the sound of a pebble falling as if from a height upon the strand below, and gazing fixedly above the direction of the sound, she made out something dark moving high up on the cliff track.

Mary’s heart began to beat wildly, and she drew a long breath; but she would not let hope carry her away for a few moments till she could be certain, and then a faint cry of joy escaped her, but only to be succeeded by a chilling sensation, as something seemed to ask her why he had come.

“I’m late,” cried a well-known voice directly after. “Why, Mary, just in the old spot. It’s like old times. My darling!” He tried to clasp her in his arms, his manner displaying no trace of his injuries; but she thrust him sharply away, half surprised and yet not surprised, for she seemed now to read the man’s character to the full.

“Captain Armstrong!” she cried, hoarsely.

“Why, my dear Mary, don’t be so prudish. You are not going to carry on that old folly?”

“Captain Armstrong, don’t mistake me.”

“Mistake you! No. You are the dearest, loveliest woman I ever saw. There, don’t be huffed because I was so long. I couldn’t get away. You know—” and he again tried to seize her.

“Captain Armstrong—”

“Now, what nonsense! You sent for me, and I have come.”

“Yes. I sent for you because there was no other way of speaking to you alone.”

“Quite right, my darling; and what could be better than here alone? Mary, sweet, it will be dark directly.”

“Sir, I sent for you here that I might beg of you to save my brother and poor Bart.”

“Curse your brother and Bart!” said the captain, angrily. “It was not their fault that they did not kill me. They’re better out of our way.”

“Captain Armstrong—James—for our old love’s sake will you save them?”

“No,” he cried, savagely. “Yes,” he added, catching Mary’s wrist; “not for our old love’s sake, but for our new love—the love that is to come. Mary, I love you; I always did love you, and now I find I cannot live without you.”

“Captain Armstrong!”

“James—your lover. Mary, you are everything to me. Don’t struggle. How can you be so foolish? There, yes, I will. I’ll do everything. I’ll refuse to appear against them if you wish me to. I’ll get them set free; but you will not hold me off like this?”

“You will save my brother?”

“Yes.”

“And his friend?”

“Yes.”

“Then I will always be grateful to you, and pray for your happiness.”

“And be mine, Mary, my love, my own?”

“You villain! you traitor!” hissed Mary, as, taking advantage of a momentary forgetfulness, he clasped her in his arms and showered kisses on her lips, her cheeks, her hair.

But Captain Armstrong had made a mistake. It was like caressing a Cornish wrestler. There was a sharp struggle, during which he found that Mary’s thews and sinews were, softly rounded as she was, strong as those of a man. She had been accustomed to row a boat in a rough sea by the hour together, and there was additional strength given to her arm by the indignation that made her blood course hotly through her veins.

How dare he, a miserable traitor, insult her as he did?

The question made the girl’s blood seem to boil; and ere he could place another kiss upon her lips Mary had forgotten brother, friend, the trial everything but the fact that James Armstrong, Mistress Armstrong’s husband, had clasped her in his arms; and in return she clasped him tightly in hers.

They swayed here for a moment, then there, and the next the captain was lifted completely from the shingle and literally jerked sideways, to fall with a crash and strike his head against a piece of rock. Then a sickening sensation came over him and all seemed dark, while, when he recovered a few minutes later, his head was bleeding and he was alone, and afraid with his swimming head to clamber up the rough cliff path.

“The cursed jade!” he muttered, as he recovered after a time, and went cautiously back after tying up his head, “I wish I could lay her alongside her brother in the gaol.”

“Yes; I’ll save him,” he said with a mocking laugh, as he reached the top of the cliff and looked down at the faint light seen in the old wrecker’s cottage. “I’ll save him; and, in spite of all, it’ll be a strange thing if Mary Dell isn’t lost.

“Curse her, how strong she is!” he said after a pause.

“What shall I say! Humph! a slip on the path and a fall. I’m weak yet after the assault. Some one will have to plaster her dearest Jemmy’s head—a sickly fool!”

Chapter Nine.Behind Prison Bars.Mary Dell went again and again to the prison in the county town, tramping till she was footsore; but she did not see Abel, for she had to encounter double difficulties—to wit, the regulations of the authorities, and her brother’s refusal to see her.At last, though, she compassed an interview with Bart Wrigley, and the big fellow listened to her stolidly, as he enjoyed the sound of her voice, sighing heavily from time to time.“But even you seem at times, Bart, as if you did not believe a word I say,” she cried passionately.“Who says I don’t?” said Bart, in a low growl. “You telled me you didn’t, my lass, and of course you didn’t. Why, I’d believe anything you told me; but as for Abel, he’s dead-set on it that you told the captain, and there’s no moving him.”“But tell him, Bart, tell him I was angry with him for what he did—”“Whatwedid,” said Bart, who was too loyal to shirk his share.“Well, what you both did, Bart; but that I would sooner have died than betray my own brother.”“Haw, haw! That’s a wunner,” said Bart, with a hoarse laugh. “That’s just what I did tell him.”“You did, Bart?”“Ay, my lass, I did; but he—”Bart stopped.“Yes, Bart, what did he say?”“Said I was a blind, thick-headed fool.”“Oh, Bart, Bart, Bart! you are the best, and truest friend we ever had.”“Say that again, lass, will you?” said the rough fellow.Mary said it again with greater emphasis, and big Bart rubbed the corner of one eye with the back of his hand.“Tell him, dear Bart, that his sister was true to him all through, and that he must believe me.”“Ay, lass, I’ll tell him; but don’t call me ‘dear Bart’ again, ’cause I can’t bear it.”“But you are our friend, and have always been like a brother to us.”“Ay, lass, I tried to be, and I’ll speak to him again. Bah! you never went again us. You couldn’t. Your tongue thrashed us a bit, as you allus did, but it was for our good. And now, look here, my lass, when we’re gone—”“When you’re gone, Bart!” cried Mary, with her lip quivering.“Ay, lass, when we’re gone, for I daresay they’ll hang us.”“Bart!”“Oh, it won’t hurt much. Not worse than being drownded, and much quicker.”“Oh, Bart, Bart!”“Don’t cry, my pretty one, only don’t forget us. You won’t forget Abel, of course; but—I never felt as if I could talk to you like this before—don’t forget as Bart Wrigley was werry fond on you, and that, if he’d been a fine hansum chap, ’stead of such a rough un, with his figure-head all set o’ one side, he’d ha’ stuck up and said as no one else shouldn’t have you.”“Oh, Bart, Bart!” sobbed Mary, piteously.“Ay, lass, that he would; but he often says to himself, ‘It wouldn’t be kind to a girl like that to hang on to her.’ So, good-bye, my pretty lady, and I’ll tell Abel as he’s the blind, thick-headed fool if he says it was you as got us into this hole.”Bart had to wind up his unwontedly long speech very quickly, for a couple of turnkeys had entered the stone-walled room, to conduct the big fellow back to his cell, and show Mary to the outside of the prison.“Good bye, dear Bart, dear old friend!”“Good bye, my pretty lady!” cried the big fellow? “You called me ‘dear Bart’ again.”“Yes, dear Bart, dear brother!” cried Mary, passionately, and, raising his big hand to her lips, she kissed it.“Bah!” growled Bart to himself, “let ’em hang me. What do I care arter that? ‘Dear Bart—dear Bart!’ I wouldn’t care a bit if I only knowed what she’d do when we’re gone.”Then the time glided on, and Mary heard from one and another the popular belief that the authorities, rejoicing in having at last caught two notorious smugglers and wreckers red-handed in a serious offence, were determined to make an example by punishing them with the utmost rigour of the law.The poor girl in her loneliness had racked her brains for means of helping her brother. She had sold everything of value they possessed to pay for legal assistance, and she had, with fertile imagination, plotted means for helping Abel to escape; but even if her plans had been possible, they had been crossed by her brother’s obstinate disbelief in her truth. His last message was one which sent her to the cottage flushed and angry, for it was a cruel repetition of his old accusation, joined with a declaration that he disbelieved in her in other ways, and that this had been done in collusion with Captain Armstrong to get him and Bart out of her way.“He’ll be sorry some day,” she said on the morning before the trial, as she sat low of spirit and alone in the little cottage.“Poor Abel! he’s very bitter and cruel; poor—Yes, do you want me?”“Genlum give me this to give you,” said a boy.Mary excitedly caught at the letter the boy handed to her, and opening it with trembling hands, managed with no little difficulty to spell out its contents.They were very short and laboriously written in a large schoolboy-like hand for her special benefit by one who knew her deficiencies of education.“It is not too late yet. Abel will be tried to-morrow and condemned unless a piece of sea-weed is received to-night.”“And I used to love him and believe in him!” she cried at last passionately, as her hot indignation at last mastered her, and she tore the letter in pieces with her teeth, spat the fragments upon the ground, and stamped upon them with every mark of contempt and disgust.Then a change came over her, and she sank sobbing upon a stool, to burst forth into a piteous wail.“Oh, Abel!—brother!—it is all my doing. I have sent you to your death!”

Mary Dell went again and again to the prison in the county town, tramping till she was footsore; but she did not see Abel, for she had to encounter double difficulties—to wit, the regulations of the authorities, and her brother’s refusal to see her.

At last, though, she compassed an interview with Bart Wrigley, and the big fellow listened to her stolidly, as he enjoyed the sound of her voice, sighing heavily from time to time.

“But even you seem at times, Bart, as if you did not believe a word I say,” she cried passionately.

“Who says I don’t?” said Bart, in a low growl. “You telled me you didn’t, my lass, and of course you didn’t. Why, I’d believe anything you told me; but as for Abel, he’s dead-set on it that you told the captain, and there’s no moving him.”

“But tell him, Bart, tell him I was angry with him for what he did—”

“Whatwedid,” said Bart, who was too loyal to shirk his share.

“Well, what you both did, Bart; but that I would sooner have died than betray my own brother.”

“Haw, haw! That’s a wunner,” said Bart, with a hoarse laugh. “That’s just what I did tell him.”

“You did, Bart?”

“Ay, my lass, I did; but he—”

Bart stopped.

“Yes, Bart, what did he say?”

“Said I was a blind, thick-headed fool.”

“Oh, Bart, Bart, Bart! you are the best, and truest friend we ever had.”

“Say that again, lass, will you?” said the rough fellow.

Mary said it again with greater emphasis, and big Bart rubbed the corner of one eye with the back of his hand.

“Tell him, dear Bart, that his sister was true to him all through, and that he must believe me.”

“Ay, lass, I’ll tell him; but don’t call me ‘dear Bart’ again, ’cause I can’t bear it.”

“But you are our friend, and have always been like a brother to us.”

“Ay, lass, I tried to be, and I’ll speak to him again. Bah! you never went again us. You couldn’t. Your tongue thrashed us a bit, as you allus did, but it was for our good. And now, look here, my lass, when we’re gone—”

“When you’re gone, Bart!” cried Mary, with her lip quivering.

“Ay, lass, when we’re gone, for I daresay they’ll hang us.”

“Bart!”

“Oh, it won’t hurt much. Not worse than being drownded, and much quicker.”

“Oh, Bart, Bart!”

“Don’t cry, my pretty one, only don’t forget us. You won’t forget Abel, of course; but—I never felt as if I could talk to you like this before—don’t forget as Bart Wrigley was werry fond on you, and that, if he’d been a fine hansum chap, ’stead of such a rough un, with his figure-head all set o’ one side, he’d ha’ stuck up and said as no one else shouldn’t have you.”

“Oh, Bart, Bart!” sobbed Mary, piteously.

“Ay, lass, that he would; but he often says to himself, ‘It wouldn’t be kind to a girl like that to hang on to her.’ So, good-bye, my pretty lady, and I’ll tell Abel as he’s the blind, thick-headed fool if he says it was you as got us into this hole.”

Bart had to wind up his unwontedly long speech very quickly, for a couple of turnkeys had entered the stone-walled room, to conduct the big fellow back to his cell, and show Mary to the outside of the prison.

“Good bye, dear Bart, dear old friend!”

“Good bye, my pretty lady!” cried the big fellow? “You called me ‘dear Bart’ again.”

“Yes, dear Bart, dear brother!” cried Mary, passionately, and, raising his big hand to her lips, she kissed it.

“Bah!” growled Bart to himself, “let ’em hang me. What do I care arter that? ‘Dear Bart—dear Bart!’ I wouldn’t care a bit if I only knowed what she’d do when we’re gone.”

Then the time glided on, and Mary heard from one and another the popular belief that the authorities, rejoicing in having at last caught two notorious smugglers and wreckers red-handed in a serious offence, were determined to make an example by punishing them with the utmost rigour of the law.

The poor girl in her loneliness had racked her brains for means of helping her brother. She had sold everything of value they possessed to pay for legal assistance, and she had, with fertile imagination, plotted means for helping Abel to escape; but even if her plans had been possible, they had been crossed by her brother’s obstinate disbelief in her truth. His last message was one which sent her to the cottage flushed and angry, for it was a cruel repetition of his old accusation, joined with a declaration that he disbelieved in her in other ways, and that this had been done in collusion with Captain Armstrong to get him and Bart out of her way.

“He’ll be sorry some day,” she said on the morning before the trial, as she sat low of spirit and alone in the little cottage.

“Poor Abel! he’s very bitter and cruel; poor—Yes, do you want me?”

“Genlum give me this to give you,” said a boy.

Mary excitedly caught at the letter the boy handed to her, and opening it with trembling hands, managed with no little difficulty to spell out its contents.

They were very short and laboriously written in a large schoolboy-like hand for her special benefit by one who knew her deficiencies of education.

“It is not too late yet. Abel will be tried to-morrow and condemned unless a piece of sea-weed is received to-night.”

“And I used to love him and believe in him!” she cried at last passionately, as her hot indignation at last mastered her, and she tore the letter in pieces with her teeth, spat the fragments upon the ground, and stamped upon them with every mark of contempt and disgust.

Then a change came over her, and she sank sobbing upon a stool, to burst forth into a piteous wail.

“Oh, Abel!—brother!—it is all my doing. I have sent you to your death!”

Chapter Ten.A Daring Trick.The laws were tremendously stringent in those days when it was considered much easier to bring an offender’s bad career to an end than to keep him at the nation’s expense, and when the stealing of a sheep was considered a crime to be punished with death, an attack upon the sacred person of one of the king’s officers by a couple of notorious law-breakers was not likely to be looked upon leniently by a judge well-known for stern sentences.But a jury of Devon men was sitting upon the offence of Abel Dell and Bart Wrigley, and feeling disposed to deal easily with a couple of young fellows whose previous bad character was all in connection with smuggling, a crime with the said jury of a very light dye, certainly not black. Abel and Bart escaped the rope, and were sentenced to transportation to one of His Majesty’s colonies in the West Indies, there to do convict work in connection with plantations, or the making of roads, as their taskmasters might think fit.Time glided by, and Mary Dell found that her life at home had become insupportable.She was not long in finding that, now that she was left alone and unprotected, she was not to be free from persecution. Her contemptuous rejection of Captain Armstrong’s advances seemed to have the effect of increasing his persecution; and one evening at the end of a couple of months Mary Dell sat on one of the rocks outside the cottage door, gazing out to sea, and watching the ships sail westward, as she wondered whether those on board would ever see the brother who seemed to be all that was left to her in this world.That particular night the thought which had been hatching in her brain ever since Abel had been sent away flew forth fully fledged and ready, and she rose from where she had been sitting in the evening sunshine, and walked into the cottage.Mary Dell’s proceedings would have excited a smile from an observer, but the cottage stood alone. She had heard that Captain Armstrong was from home and not expected back for a week, and there was no fear of prying eyes as the sturdy, well-built girl took down a looking-glass from where it hung to a nail, and, placing it upon the table, propped it with an old jar, and then seating herself before the glass, she folded her arms, rested them upon the table, and sat for quite an hour gazing at herself in the mirror.Womanly vanity? Not a scrap of it, but firm, intense purpose: deep thought; calm, calculating observation before taking a step that was to influence her life.She rose after a time and walked into her brother Abel’s bed-room, where she stayed for some minutes, and then with a quick, resolute step she re-entered the cottage kitchen, thrust the few embers together that burned upon the hearth, took a pair of scissors from a box, and again seated herself before the glass.The sun was setting, and filled the slate-floored kitchen with light which flashed back from the blurred looking-glass, and cast a curious glare in the girl’s stern countenance, with its heavy dark brows, sun-browned ruddy cheeks, and gleaming eyes.Snip!The sharp scissors had passed through one lock of the massive black tresses which she had shaken over her shoulders, and which then rippled to the cottage floor.Snip!Another cut, and two locks had fallen. Then rapidlysnip, snip, snip—a curious thick, sharpsnip—and the great waves of glorious hair kept falling as the bare, sun-burned, ruddy arm played here and there, and the steel blades glittered and opened and closed, as if arm, hand, and scissors formed the neck, head, and angry bill of some fierce bird attacking that well-shaped head, and at every snap took off a thick tress of hair.It was not a long task, and when the hair had all fallen, to lie around, one glorious ring of glossy black tresses, there were only a few snips to give here and there to finish off notches and too long, untidy spots, and then the girl rose, and with a cold, hard look upon her frowning face she stooped, and stooped, and stooped, and at each rising cast a great tress of hair to where the flames leaped, and seized it, torching the locks, which writhed, and curled, and flared, and crackled as if alive, while, as if to aid the idea that she was destroying something living, a peculiarly pungent odour arose, as of burning flesh, and filled the room.An hour later, just as the red moon rose slowly above the surface of the sea, a sturdy-looking young man, with a stout stick in one hand—the very stick which had helped to belabour Captain Armstrong—and a bundle tied up in a handkerchief beneath his arm, stepped out of the cottage, changed the key from inside to outside, closed the old door, locked it, dragged out the key, and with a sudden jerk sent it flying far out into deep water beyond the rocks, where it fell with a dullplash! followed by a peculiar hissing sound, as the waves at high water rushed back over the fine shingle at the thrower’s feet.There was a sharp look round then; but no one was in sight; nothing to be heard but the hissing waters, and the splashing, gasping, and smacking sound, as the tide swayed in and out among the masses of stone. Then the figure turned once more to the cottage, gazed at it fixedly for a few moments, took a step or two away; but sprang back directly with an exceeding bitter cry, and kissed the rough, unpainted woodwork again and again with rapid action, and then dashed off to the foot of the cliff, and climbed rapidly to the sheep-track—the faintly-seen path that led towards Slapton Lea and the old hall, where the captain still stayed with his young wife, and then joined the west road which led to Plymouth town.The risky part of the track was passed, and the open and down-like pastures beyond the cliffs were reached; and here, with the moon beginning to throw the shadow of the traveller far forward and in weird-looking length, the original of that shadow strode on manfully for another quarter of a mile, when all at once there was a stoppage, for another figure was seen coming from the direction of Torcross, and the moon shining full upon the face showed plainly who it was.There was no question of identity, for that evening, after more than his customary modicum of wine, Captain James Armstrong—whose journey had been postponed—had snubbed his young wife cruelly, quarrelled with his cousin Humphrey, who had been there to dine, and then left the house, determined to go down to Mary Dell’s solitary cottage.“I’m a fool,” he said; “I haven’t been firm enough with the handsome cat. She scratched. Well, cats have claws, and when I have taught her how to purr nicely she’ll keep them always sheathed. I’ll bring her to her senses to-night, once and for all.“Who the devil’s this?” muttered the captain. “Humph! sailor on the tramp to Plymouth. Well, he won’t know me. I won’t turn back.”He strode on a dozen yards and then stopped short, as the figure before him had stopped a few moments before; and then a change came over the aspect of the captain. His knees shook, his face turned wet, and his throat grew dry.It was horrible; but there could be no mistake.“Abel Dell!” he cried, hoarsely, as he leaped at the idea that the brother had returned in spirit, to save his sister from all harm.“Out of my path!” rang forth in answer, the voice being loud, imperious, and fierce; and then, in a tone of intense hatred and suppressed passion, the one word—“Dog!”As the last word rang out there was a whistling as of a stick passing through the air, a tremendous thud, and the captain fell headlong upon the rocky ground.Then there was utter silence as the young sailor placed one foot upon the prostrate man’s chest, stamped upon it savagely, and strode on right away over the wild country bordering the sea.The figure loomed up once in the moonlight, as the captain rose slowly upon one elbow, and gazed after it, to see that it seemed to be of supernatural proportions, and then he sank back again with a groan.“It’s a spirit,” he said, “come back to her;” and then the poltroon fainted dead away.

The laws were tremendously stringent in those days when it was considered much easier to bring an offender’s bad career to an end than to keep him at the nation’s expense, and when the stealing of a sheep was considered a crime to be punished with death, an attack upon the sacred person of one of the king’s officers by a couple of notorious law-breakers was not likely to be looked upon leniently by a judge well-known for stern sentences.

But a jury of Devon men was sitting upon the offence of Abel Dell and Bart Wrigley, and feeling disposed to deal easily with a couple of young fellows whose previous bad character was all in connection with smuggling, a crime with the said jury of a very light dye, certainly not black. Abel and Bart escaped the rope, and were sentenced to transportation to one of His Majesty’s colonies in the West Indies, there to do convict work in connection with plantations, or the making of roads, as their taskmasters might think fit.

Time glided by, and Mary Dell found that her life at home had become insupportable.

She was not long in finding that, now that she was left alone and unprotected, she was not to be free from persecution. Her contemptuous rejection of Captain Armstrong’s advances seemed to have the effect of increasing his persecution; and one evening at the end of a couple of months Mary Dell sat on one of the rocks outside the cottage door, gazing out to sea, and watching the ships sail westward, as she wondered whether those on board would ever see the brother who seemed to be all that was left to her in this world.

That particular night the thought which had been hatching in her brain ever since Abel had been sent away flew forth fully fledged and ready, and she rose from where she had been sitting in the evening sunshine, and walked into the cottage.

Mary Dell’s proceedings would have excited a smile from an observer, but the cottage stood alone. She had heard that Captain Armstrong was from home and not expected back for a week, and there was no fear of prying eyes as the sturdy, well-built girl took down a looking-glass from where it hung to a nail, and, placing it upon the table, propped it with an old jar, and then seating herself before the glass, she folded her arms, rested them upon the table, and sat for quite an hour gazing at herself in the mirror.

Womanly vanity? Not a scrap of it, but firm, intense purpose: deep thought; calm, calculating observation before taking a step that was to influence her life.

She rose after a time and walked into her brother Abel’s bed-room, where she stayed for some minutes, and then with a quick, resolute step she re-entered the cottage kitchen, thrust the few embers together that burned upon the hearth, took a pair of scissors from a box, and again seated herself before the glass.

The sun was setting, and filled the slate-floored kitchen with light which flashed back from the blurred looking-glass, and cast a curious glare in the girl’s stern countenance, with its heavy dark brows, sun-browned ruddy cheeks, and gleaming eyes.

Snip!

The sharp scissors had passed through one lock of the massive black tresses which she had shaken over her shoulders, and which then rippled to the cottage floor.

Snip!

Another cut, and two locks had fallen. Then rapidlysnip, snip, snip—a curious thick, sharpsnip—and the great waves of glorious hair kept falling as the bare, sun-burned, ruddy arm played here and there, and the steel blades glittered and opened and closed, as if arm, hand, and scissors formed the neck, head, and angry bill of some fierce bird attacking that well-shaped head, and at every snap took off a thick tress of hair.

It was not a long task, and when the hair had all fallen, to lie around, one glorious ring of glossy black tresses, there were only a few snips to give here and there to finish off notches and too long, untidy spots, and then the girl rose, and with a cold, hard look upon her frowning face she stooped, and stooped, and stooped, and at each rising cast a great tress of hair to where the flames leaped, and seized it, torching the locks, which writhed, and curled, and flared, and crackled as if alive, while, as if to aid the idea that she was destroying something living, a peculiarly pungent odour arose, as of burning flesh, and filled the room.

An hour later, just as the red moon rose slowly above the surface of the sea, a sturdy-looking young man, with a stout stick in one hand—the very stick which had helped to belabour Captain Armstrong—and a bundle tied up in a handkerchief beneath his arm, stepped out of the cottage, changed the key from inside to outside, closed the old door, locked it, dragged out the key, and with a sudden jerk sent it flying far out into deep water beyond the rocks, where it fell with a dullplash! followed by a peculiar hissing sound, as the waves at high water rushed back over the fine shingle at the thrower’s feet.

There was a sharp look round then; but no one was in sight; nothing to be heard but the hissing waters, and the splashing, gasping, and smacking sound, as the tide swayed in and out among the masses of stone. Then the figure turned once more to the cottage, gazed at it fixedly for a few moments, took a step or two away; but sprang back directly with an exceeding bitter cry, and kissed the rough, unpainted woodwork again and again with rapid action, and then dashed off to the foot of the cliff, and climbed rapidly to the sheep-track—the faintly-seen path that led towards Slapton Lea and the old hall, where the captain still stayed with his young wife, and then joined the west road which led to Plymouth town.

The risky part of the track was passed, and the open and down-like pastures beyond the cliffs were reached; and here, with the moon beginning to throw the shadow of the traveller far forward and in weird-looking length, the original of that shadow strode on manfully for another quarter of a mile, when all at once there was a stoppage, for another figure was seen coming from the direction of Torcross, and the moon shining full upon the face showed plainly who it was.

There was no question of identity, for that evening, after more than his customary modicum of wine, Captain James Armstrong—whose journey had been postponed—had snubbed his young wife cruelly, quarrelled with his cousin Humphrey, who had been there to dine, and then left the house, determined to go down to Mary Dell’s solitary cottage.

“I’m a fool,” he said; “I haven’t been firm enough with the handsome cat. She scratched. Well, cats have claws, and when I have taught her how to purr nicely she’ll keep them always sheathed. I’ll bring her to her senses to-night, once and for all.

“Who the devil’s this?” muttered the captain. “Humph! sailor on the tramp to Plymouth. Well, he won’t know me. I won’t turn back.”

He strode on a dozen yards and then stopped short, as the figure before him had stopped a few moments before; and then a change came over the aspect of the captain. His knees shook, his face turned wet, and his throat grew dry.

It was horrible; but there could be no mistake.

“Abel Dell!” he cried, hoarsely, as he leaped at the idea that the brother had returned in spirit, to save his sister from all harm.

“Out of my path!” rang forth in answer, the voice being loud, imperious, and fierce; and then, in a tone of intense hatred and suppressed passion, the one word—“Dog!”

As the last word rang out there was a whistling as of a stick passing through the air, a tremendous thud, and the captain fell headlong upon the rocky ground.

Then there was utter silence as the young sailor placed one foot upon the prostrate man’s chest, stamped upon it savagely, and strode on right away over the wild country bordering the sea.

The figure loomed up once in the moonlight, as the captain rose slowly upon one elbow, and gazed after it, to see that it seemed to be of supernatural proportions, and then he sank back again with a groan.

“It’s a spirit,” he said, “come back to her;” and then the poltroon fainted dead away.

Chapter Eleven.In the Plantation.Someone singing a West Country ditty.“His sloe-black eyes...”A pause in the singing, and the striking of several blows with a rough hoe, to the destruction of weeds in a coffee-plantation; while, as the chops of the hoe struck the clods of earth, the fetters worn by the striker gave forth faint clinks.Then in a pleasant musical voice the singer went on with another line—“And his curly hair...”More chops with the hoe, and clinks of the fetters.“His pleasing voice...”A heavy thump with the back of the tool at an obstinate clod, which took several more strokes before it crumbled up; and all the time the fetters clinked and clanked loudly. Then the singer went on with the sweet old minor air with its childish words.“Did my heart ensnare...”Chop! chop! clink! clink! clank!“Genteel he was...”“But no rake like you.”“Oh, I say, Abel, mate; don’t, lad, don’t.”“Don’t what?” said Abel Dell, resting upon his hoe, and looking up at big Bart Wrigley, clothed like himself, armed with a hoe, and also decorated with fetters, as he stood wiping the perspiration from his forehead.“Don’t sing that there old song. It do make me feel so unked.”“Unked, Bart! Well, what if it does? These are unked days.”“Ay; but each time you sings that I seem to see the rocks along by the shore at home, with the ivy hanging down, and the sheep feeding, and the sea rolling in, and the blue sky, with gulls a-flying; and it makes me feel like a boy again, and, big as I am, as if I should cry.”“Always were like a big boy, Bart. Hoe away, lad; the overseer’s looking.”Bart went on chopping weeds, diligently following his friend’s example, as a sour-looking, yellow-faced man came by, in company with a soldier loosely shouldering his musket. But they passed by without speaking, and Abel continued—“There’s sea here, and blue sky and sunshine.”“Ay,” said Bart; “there’s sunshine hot enough to fry a mack’rel. Place is right enough if you was free; but it ar’n’t home, Abel, it ar’n’t home.”“Home! no,” said the young man, savagely. “But we have no home. She spoiled that.”There was an interval of weed-chopping and clod-breaking, the young men’s chains clanking loudly as they worked now so energetically that the overseer noted their proceedings, and pointed them out as examples to an idle hand.“Ah! you’re a hard ’un, Abel,” remarked Bart, after a time.“Yes; and you’re a soft ’un, Bart. She could always turn you round her little finger.”“Ay, bless her! and she didn’t tell on us.”“Yes, she did,” said Abel, sourly; and he turned his back upon his companion, and toiled away to hide the working of his face.The sun shone down as hotly as it can shine in the West Indies, and the coarse shirts the young men wore showed patches of moisture where the perspiration came through, but they worked on, for the labour deadened the misery in their breasts.And yet it was a very paradise, as far as nature was concerned. Man had spoiled it as far as he could, his cultivation being but a poor recompense for turning so lovely a spot into a plantation, worked by convicts—by men who fouled the ambient air each moment they opened their lips; while from time to time the earth was stained with blood.In the distance shone the sea, and between the plantation and the silver coral sands lay patches of virgin forest, where the richest and most luxuriant of tropic growth revelled in the heat and moisture, while in the sunny patches brilliant flowers blossomed. Then came wild tangle, cane-brake, and in one place, where a creek indented the land, weird-looking mangroves spread their leafage over their muddy scaffolds of aërial roots.“How long have we been here, mate?” said Bart, after a pause.“Dunno,” replied Abel, fiercely.Here he began chopping more vigorously.“How long will they keep us in this here place?” said Bart, after another interval, and he looked from the beautiful shore at the bottom of the slope on which they worked to the cluster of stone and wood-built buildings, which formed the prison and the station farm, with factory and mill, all worked by convict labour, while those in the neighbourhood were managed by blacks.Abel did not answer, only scowled fiercely; and Bart sighed, and repeated his question.“Till we die!” said Abel, savagely; “same as we’ve seen other fellows die—of fever, and hard work, and the lash. Curse the captain! Curse—”Bart clapped one hand over his companion’s lips, and he held the other behind his head, dropping his hoe to leave full liberty to act.“I never quarrels with you, Abel, lad,” he said, shortly; “but if you says words again that poor gell, I’m going to fight—and that won’t do. Is it easy?”Abel seemed disposed to struggle; but he gave in, nodded his head, and Bart loosed him and picked up his hoe, just as the overseer, who had come softly up behind, brought down the whip he carried with stinging violence across the shoulders of first one and then the other.The young men sprang round savagely; but there was a sentry close behind, musket-armed and with bayonet fixed, and they knew that fifty soldiers were within call, and that if they struck their task-master down and made for the jungle they would be hunted out with dogs, be shot down like wild beasts, or die of starvation, as other unfortunates had died before them.There was nothing for it but to resume their labour and hoe to the clanking of their fetters, while, after a promise of what was to follow, in the shape of tying up to the triangles, and the cat, if they quarrelled again, the overseer went on to see to the others of his flock.“It’s worse than a dog’s life!” said Abel, bitterly. “A dog does get patted as well as kicked. Bart, lad, I’m sorry I got you that lash.”“Nay, lad, never mind,” said Bart. “I’m sorry for you; but don’t speak hard things of Mary.”“I’ll try not,” said Abel, as he hoed away excitedly; “but I hope this coffee we grow may poison those who drink it.”“What for? They can’t help it,” said Bart, smiling. “There, lad, take it coolly. Some day we may make a run for it.”“And be shot!” said Abel, bitterly. “There, you’re down to the end of that row. I’ll go this way. He’s watching us.”Bart obeyed. He was one who always did obey; and by degrees the young men were working right away from each other, till they were a good two hundred yards apart.Abel was at the end of his row first, and he stopped and turned to begin again and go down, so as to pass Bart at about the middle of the clearing; but Bart had another minute’s chopping to do before turning.He was close up to a dense patch of forest—one wild tangle of cane and creeper, which literally tied the tall trees together and made the forest impassable—when the shrieking of a kind of jay, which had been flitting about excitedly, stopped, and was followed by the melodious whistle of a white bird and the twittering of quite a flock of little fellows of a gorgeous scarlet-crimson. Then the shrieking of several parrots answering each other arose; while just above Bart’s head, where clusters of trumpet-shaped blossoms hung down from the edge of the forest, scores of brilliantly-scaled humming-birds literally buzzed on almost transparent wing, and then suspended themselves in mid-air as they probed the nectaries of the flowers with their long bills.“You’re beauties, you are,” said Bart, stopping to wipe his brow; “but I’d give the hull lot on you for a sight of one good old sarcy sparrer a-sitting on the cottage roof and sayingchisel chisel. Ah! shall us ever see old Devonshire again?”The parrots hung upside-down, and the tiny humming-birds flitted here and there, displaying, from time to time, the brilliancy of their scale-like feathers, and Bart glanced at his fellow-convict and was about to work back, when there came a sound from out of the dark forest which made him stare wildly, and then the sound arose again.Bart changed colour, and did not stop to hoe, but walked rapidly across to Abel.“What’s the matter?” said the latter.“Dunno, lad,” said the other, rubbing his brow with his arm; “but there’s something wrong.”“What is it?”“That’s what I dunno; but just now something said quite plain, ‘Bart! Bart!’”“Nonsense! You were dreaming.”“Nay. I was wide awake as I am now, and as I turned and stared it said it again.”“It said it?”“Well, she said it.”“Poll parrot,” said Abel, gruffly. “Go on with your work. Here’s the overseer.”The young men worked away, and their supervisor passed them, and, apparently satisfied, continued his journey round.“May have been a poll parrot,” said Bart. “They do talk plain, Abel, lad; but this sounded like something else.”“What else could it be?”“Sounded like a ghost.”Abel burst into a hearty laugh—so hearty that Bart’s face was slowly overspread by a broad smile.“Why, lud, that’s better,” he said, grimly. “I ar’n’t seen you do that for months. Work away.”The hint was given because of the overseer glancing in their direction, and they now worked on together slowly, going down the row toward the jungle, at which Bart kept on darting uneasy glances.“Enough to make a man laugh to hear you talk of ghosts, Bart,” said Abel, after a time.“What could it be, then?”“Parrot some lady tamed,” said Abel, shortly, as they worked on side by side, “escaped to the woods again. Some of these birds talk just like a Christian.”“Ay,” said Bart, after a few moments’ quiet thought, “I’ve heared ’em, lad; but there’s no poll parrot out here as knows me.”“Knows you?”“Well, didn’t I tell you as it called to me ‘Bart! Bart!’”“Sounded like it,” said Abel, laconically. “What does he want?”For just then the overseer shouted, and signed to the gang-men to come to him.“To begin another job—log-rolling, I think,” growled Bart, shouldering his hoe.At that moment, as Abel followed his example, there came in a low, eager tone of voice from out of the jungle, twenty yards away—“Bart!—Abel!—Abel!”“Don’t look,” whispered Abel, who reeled as if struck, and recovered himself to catch his companion by the arm. “All right!” he said aloud; “we’ll be here to-morrow. We must go.”

Someone singing a West Country ditty.

“His sloe-black eyes...”

A pause in the singing, and the striking of several blows with a rough hoe, to the destruction of weeds in a coffee-plantation; while, as the chops of the hoe struck the clods of earth, the fetters worn by the striker gave forth faint clinks.

Then in a pleasant musical voice the singer went on with another line—

“And his curly hair...”

More chops with the hoe, and clinks of the fetters.

“His pleasing voice...”

A heavy thump with the back of the tool at an obstinate clod, which took several more strokes before it crumbled up; and all the time the fetters clinked and clanked loudly. Then the singer went on with the sweet old minor air with its childish words.

“Did my heart ensnare...”

Chop! chop! clink! clink! clank!

“Genteel he was...”

“But no rake like you.”

“Oh, I say, Abel, mate; don’t, lad, don’t.”

“Don’t what?” said Abel Dell, resting upon his hoe, and looking up at big Bart Wrigley, clothed like himself, armed with a hoe, and also decorated with fetters, as he stood wiping the perspiration from his forehead.

“Don’t sing that there old song. It do make me feel so unked.”

“Unked, Bart! Well, what if it does? These are unked days.”

“Ay; but each time you sings that I seem to see the rocks along by the shore at home, with the ivy hanging down, and the sheep feeding, and the sea rolling in, and the blue sky, with gulls a-flying; and it makes me feel like a boy again, and, big as I am, as if I should cry.”

“Always were like a big boy, Bart. Hoe away, lad; the overseer’s looking.”

Bart went on chopping weeds, diligently following his friend’s example, as a sour-looking, yellow-faced man came by, in company with a soldier loosely shouldering his musket. But they passed by without speaking, and Abel continued—

“There’s sea here, and blue sky and sunshine.”

“Ay,” said Bart; “there’s sunshine hot enough to fry a mack’rel. Place is right enough if you was free; but it ar’n’t home, Abel, it ar’n’t home.”

“Home! no,” said the young man, savagely. “But we have no home. She spoiled that.”

There was an interval of weed-chopping and clod-breaking, the young men’s chains clanking loudly as they worked now so energetically that the overseer noted their proceedings, and pointed them out as examples to an idle hand.

“Ah! you’re a hard ’un, Abel,” remarked Bart, after a time.

“Yes; and you’re a soft ’un, Bart. She could always turn you round her little finger.”

“Ay, bless her! and she didn’t tell on us.”

“Yes, she did,” said Abel, sourly; and he turned his back upon his companion, and toiled away to hide the working of his face.

The sun shone down as hotly as it can shine in the West Indies, and the coarse shirts the young men wore showed patches of moisture where the perspiration came through, but they worked on, for the labour deadened the misery in their breasts.

And yet it was a very paradise, as far as nature was concerned. Man had spoiled it as far as he could, his cultivation being but a poor recompense for turning so lovely a spot into a plantation, worked by convicts—by men who fouled the ambient air each moment they opened their lips; while from time to time the earth was stained with blood.

In the distance shone the sea, and between the plantation and the silver coral sands lay patches of virgin forest, where the richest and most luxuriant of tropic growth revelled in the heat and moisture, while in the sunny patches brilliant flowers blossomed. Then came wild tangle, cane-brake, and in one place, where a creek indented the land, weird-looking mangroves spread their leafage over their muddy scaffolds of aërial roots.

“How long have we been here, mate?” said Bart, after a pause.

“Dunno,” replied Abel, fiercely.

Here he began chopping more vigorously.

“How long will they keep us in this here place?” said Bart, after another interval, and he looked from the beautiful shore at the bottom of the slope on which they worked to the cluster of stone and wood-built buildings, which formed the prison and the station farm, with factory and mill, all worked by convict labour, while those in the neighbourhood were managed by blacks.

Abel did not answer, only scowled fiercely; and Bart sighed, and repeated his question.

“Till we die!” said Abel, savagely; “same as we’ve seen other fellows die—of fever, and hard work, and the lash. Curse the captain! Curse—”

Bart clapped one hand over his companion’s lips, and he held the other behind his head, dropping his hoe to leave full liberty to act.

“I never quarrels with you, Abel, lad,” he said, shortly; “but if you says words again that poor gell, I’m going to fight—and that won’t do. Is it easy?”

Abel seemed disposed to struggle; but he gave in, nodded his head, and Bart loosed him and picked up his hoe, just as the overseer, who had come softly up behind, brought down the whip he carried with stinging violence across the shoulders of first one and then the other.

The young men sprang round savagely; but there was a sentry close behind, musket-armed and with bayonet fixed, and they knew that fifty soldiers were within call, and that if they struck their task-master down and made for the jungle they would be hunted out with dogs, be shot down like wild beasts, or die of starvation, as other unfortunates had died before them.

There was nothing for it but to resume their labour and hoe to the clanking of their fetters, while, after a promise of what was to follow, in the shape of tying up to the triangles, and the cat, if they quarrelled again, the overseer went on to see to the others of his flock.

“It’s worse than a dog’s life!” said Abel, bitterly. “A dog does get patted as well as kicked. Bart, lad, I’m sorry I got you that lash.”

“Nay, lad, never mind,” said Bart. “I’m sorry for you; but don’t speak hard things of Mary.”

“I’ll try not,” said Abel, as he hoed away excitedly; “but I hope this coffee we grow may poison those who drink it.”

“What for? They can’t help it,” said Bart, smiling. “There, lad, take it coolly. Some day we may make a run for it.”

“And be shot!” said Abel, bitterly. “There, you’re down to the end of that row. I’ll go this way. He’s watching us.”

Bart obeyed. He was one who always did obey; and by degrees the young men were working right away from each other, till they were a good two hundred yards apart.

Abel was at the end of his row first, and he stopped and turned to begin again and go down, so as to pass Bart at about the middle of the clearing; but Bart had another minute’s chopping to do before turning.

He was close up to a dense patch of forest—one wild tangle of cane and creeper, which literally tied the tall trees together and made the forest impassable—when the shrieking of a kind of jay, which had been flitting about excitedly, stopped, and was followed by the melodious whistle of a white bird and the twittering of quite a flock of little fellows of a gorgeous scarlet-crimson. Then the shrieking of several parrots answering each other arose; while just above Bart’s head, where clusters of trumpet-shaped blossoms hung down from the edge of the forest, scores of brilliantly-scaled humming-birds literally buzzed on almost transparent wing, and then suspended themselves in mid-air as they probed the nectaries of the flowers with their long bills.

“You’re beauties, you are,” said Bart, stopping to wipe his brow; “but I’d give the hull lot on you for a sight of one good old sarcy sparrer a-sitting on the cottage roof and sayingchisel chisel. Ah! shall us ever see old Devonshire again?”

The parrots hung upside-down, and the tiny humming-birds flitted here and there, displaying, from time to time, the brilliancy of their scale-like feathers, and Bart glanced at his fellow-convict and was about to work back, when there came a sound from out of the dark forest which made him stare wildly, and then the sound arose again.

Bart changed colour, and did not stop to hoe, but walked rapidly across to Abel.

“What’s the matter?” said the latter.

“Dunno, lad,” said the other, rubbing his brow with his arm; “but there’s something wrong.”

“What is it?”

“That’s what I dunno; but just now something said quite plain, ‘Bart! Bart!’”

“Nonsense! You were dreaming.”

“Nay. I was wide awake as I am now, and as I turned and stared it said it again.”

“It said it?”

“Well, she said it.”

“Poll parrot,” said Abel, gruffly. “Go on with your work. Here’s the overseer.”

The young men worked away, and their supervisor passed them, and, apparently satisfied, continued his journey round.

“May have been a poll parrot,” said Bart. “They do talk plain, Abel, lad; but this sounded like something else.”

“What else could it be?”

“Sounded like a ghost.”

Abel burst into a hearty laugh—so hearty that Bart’s face was slowly overspread by a broad smile.

“Why, lud, that’s better,” he said, grimly. “I ar’n’t seen you do that for months. Work away.”

The hint was given because of the overseer glancing in their direction, and they now worked on together slowly, going down the row toward the jungle, at which Bart kept on darting uneasy glances.

“Enough to make a man laugh to hear you talk of ghosts, Bart,” said Abel, after a time.

“What could it be, then?”

“Parrot some lady tamed,” said Abel, shortly, as they worked on side by side, “escaped to the woods again. Some of these birds talk just like a Christian.”

“Ay,” said Bart, after a few moments’ quiet thought, “I’ve heared ’em, lad; but there’s no poll parrot out here as knows me.”

“Knows you?”

“Well, didn’t I tell you as it called to me ‘Bart! Bart!’”

“Sounded like it,” said Abel, laconically. “What does he want?”

For just then the overseer shouted, and signed to the gang-men to come to him.

“To begin another job—log-rolling, I think,” growled Bart, shouldering his hoe.

At that moment, as Abel followed his example, there came in a low, eager tone of voice from out of the jungle, twenty yards away—

“Bart!—Abel!—Abel!”

“Don’t look,” whispered Abel, who reeled as if struck, and recovered himself to catch his companion by the arm. “All right!” he said aloud; “we’ll be here to-morrow. We must go.”

Chapter Twelve.In Deadly Peril.It was quite a week before the two young men were at work in the plantation of young trees again, and during all that time they had feverishly discussed the voice they had heard. Every time they had approached the borders of the plantation when it ran up to the virgin forest they had been on thequi vive, expecting to hear their names called again, but only to be disappointed; and, after due consideration, Abel placed a right interpretation upon the reason.“It was someone who got ashore from a boat,” he said, “and managed to crawl up there. It’s the only place where anyone could get up.”“Being nigh that creek, lad, where the crocodiles is,” said Bart. “Ay, you’re right. Who could it be?”“One of our old mates.”“Nay; no old mate would take all that trouble for us, lad. It’s someone Mary’s sent to bring us a letter and a bit of news.”It was at night in the prison lines that Bart said this, and then he listened wonderingly in the dark, for he heard something like a sob from close to his elbow.“Abel, matey!” he whispered.“Don’t talk to me, old lad,” came back hoarsely after a time. And then, after a long silence, “Yes, you’re right. Poor lass—poor lass!”“Say that again, Abel; say that again,” whispered Bart, excitedly.“Poor lass! I’ve been too hard on her. She didn’t get us took.”“Thank God!”These were Bart’s hoarsely whispered words, choked with emotion; and directly after, as he lay there, Abel Dell felt a great, rough, trembling hand pass across his face and search about him till it reached his own, which it gripped and held with a strong, firm clasp, for there was beneath Bart’s rough, husk-like exterior a great deal of the true, loyal, loving material of which English gentlemen are made; and when towards morning those two prisoners fell asleep in their chains, hand was still gripped in hand, while the dreams that brightened the remaining hours of their rest from penal labour were very similar, being of a rough home down beneath Devon’s lovely cliffs, where the sea ran sparkling over the clean-washed pebbles, and the handsome face of Mary smiled upon each in turn.“Abel, mate, I’m ready for anything now,” said Bart, as they went that morning to their work. “Only say again as you forgive our lass.”“Bart, old lad,” said Abel, hoarsely, “I’ve nought to forgive.”“Hah!” ejaculated Bart, and then he began to whistle softly as if in the highest of spirits, and looked longingly in the direction of the jungle beside the mud creek; but three days elapsed before they were set to hoe among the coffee bushes again.Bart let his chin go down upon his chest on the morning when the order was given, and the overseer saw it and cracked his whip.“You sulky ruffian!” he cried. “None of your sour looks with me. Get on with you!”He cracked his whip again, and Bart shuffled off, clinking his fetters loudly.“Do keep between us, Abel, lad,” he whispered, “or I shall go off and he’ll see. Oh, lor’, how I do want to laugh!”He restrained his mirth for a time, and they walked on to the end of the plantation and began their task at the opposite end to where they had left off, when the rate at which their hoes were plied was such that they were not long before they began to near the dense jungle, beyond which lay the mangrove swamp and the sea.“I daren’t hope, Bart,” whispered Abel, so despondently that his companion, in a wildly excited manner, laughed in his face.“What a lad you are!” he cried. “It’s all right; he’s waiting for us. It’s some, sailor chap from Dartmouth, whose ship’s put in at Kingston or Belize. Cheer up, mate!”But it was all a mockery; and when they approached the jungle at last, hoeing more slowly for, much as they longed to go up at once, they knew that any unusual movement on their part, might be interpreted by watchful eyes into an attempt at escape, and bring down upon them a shot. Bart’s voice trembled and sounded hoarsely as he said playfully—“Now, Abel, my lad, I’m going to talk to that there poll parrot.”“Hush!” whispered Abel, agitatedly. “Keep on quietly with your work till we get close, and then call softly.”“Oh, it’s all straight, lad,” whispered back Bart, chopping away and breaking clods, as his fetters clanked more loudly than ever. “Now, then, Polly! Pretty Polly, are you there?”“Yes, yes, Bart. Abel, dear brother, at last, at last!” came from the jungle.“Mary—Polly, my girl!” cried Abel, hoarsely, as he threw down his hoe; and he was running toward the jungle, where a crashing sound was heard, when Bart flung his strong arms across his chest and dashed him to the ground.“Are you mad!” he cried. “Mary, for God’s sake keep back!”The warning was needed, for from across the plantation the overseer and a couple of soldiers came running, every movement on the part of the prisoners being watched.“Sham ill, lad; sham ill,” whispered Bart, as a piteous sigh came from the depths of the jungle.“Now, then, you two. Fighting again!” roared the overseer, as he came panting up.“Fighting, sir!” growled Bart; “rum fighting. He nearly went down.”“He was trying to escape.”“Escape!” growled Bart. “Look at him. Sun’s hot.”The overseer bent down over Abel, whose aspect helped the illusion, for he looked ghastly from his emotion; and he had presence of mind enough to open his eyes, look about, wildly from face to face, and then begin to struggle up, with one hand to his head.“Is it the fayver, sor?” said one of the soldiers.“No. Touch of the sun,” said the overseer. “They’re always getting it. There, you’re all right, ar’n’t you?”“Yes, sir,” said Abel, slowly, as he picked up his hoe.“Sit down under the trees there for a few minutes,” said the overseer. “Lend him your water bottle, soldier. And you stop with him till he’s hotter. I’ll come back soon.”This last was to Bart, playing, as it were, into the prisoners’ hands, for Bart took the water bottle; and as the overseer went off with his guard, Abel was assisted to the edge of the jungle where a huge cotton-tree threw its shade; and here Bart placed him on an old stump, trembling the while, as he held the water to his companion’s lips.It was hard work to keep still while the others went out of hearing; but at last it seemed safe, and Abel panted out—“Mary, dear, are you there?”“Yes, yes, Abel. Oh, my dear brother, say one kind word to me!”“Kind word? Oh, my lass, my lass, say that you forgive me!”“Forgive you? Yes. But quick, dear, before those men come back.”“Tell me, then,” said Abel, speaking with his back to the jungle, and his head bent down as if ill, while Bart leaned over him, trembling like a leaf, “tell me how you came to be here.”“I came over in a ship to Kingston. Then I went to New Orleans. Then to Honduras. And it was only a fortnight ago that I found you.”“But how did you come here?”“I’ve got a small boat, dear. I asked and asked for months before I could find out where you were. I’ve been to other plantations, and people have thought me mad; but one day I stumbled across the sailors of a ship that comes here with stores from the station, and I heard them say that there were a number of prisoners working at this place; and at last, after waiting and watching for weeks and weeks, I caught sight of you two, and then it was a month before I could speak to you as I did the other day.”“And now you have come,” said Abel, bitterly, “I can’t even look at you.”“But you will escape, dear,” said Mary.“Escape!” cried Abel, excitedly.“Steady, lad, steady. ’Member you’re ill,” growled Bart, glancing toward the nearest sentry, and then holding up the bottle as if to see how much was within.“Yes, escape,” said Mary. “I have the boat ready. Can you come now?”“Impossible! We should be overtaken and shot before we had gone a mile.”“But you must escape,” said Mary. “You must get down here by night.”“How?” said Bart, gruffly.“You two must settle that,” said Mary, quickly. “I am only a woman; but I have found means to get here with a boat, and I can come again and again till you join me.”“Yes,” said Abel, decidedly; “we will contrive that.”“But is it safe, lass, where you are?”“What do you mean?”“They telled us there was the crocodiles all along that creek, and sharks out beyond, if we tried to run.”“Yes,” said Mary, calmly, “there are plenty of these creatures about.”“Listen,” said Abel, quickly, and speaking as decidedly now as his sister. “Can you get here night after night?”“Yes,” said Mary. “I have been here every night since I spoke to you last.”“Then keep on coming.”“Yes,” said Mary; “I will till you escape.”“You have the boat?”“Yes.”“And provisions?”“Yes; a little.”“But how do you manage?”“I am fishing if any one sees me; but it is very lonely here. I see nothing but the birds,” she added to herself, “and sharks and alligators;” and as she said this she smiled sadly.“Be careful, then,” said Abel. “Bart, old lad, we will escape.”There was a loud expiration of the breath from the jungle, and Abel continued—“I must get up and go on work, or they will be back. Mary, once more, you have a boat?”“Yes.”“And can come up here and wait?”“Yes.”Quick, short, decided answers each time.“Then be cautious. Only come by night.”“I know. Trust me. I will not be seen. I will do nothing rash. To-night as soon as it grows dark, I shall be here expecting you, for I shall not stir. At daybreak I shall go, and come again at night.”“And mind the sentries.”“Trust me, Abel. I shall not come now by day for six days. If at the end of six nights you have not been able to escape, I shall come for six days by day, hoping that you may be more successful in the daylight; for perhaps you will find that a bold dash will help you to get away.”“But the risk—the risk?” panted Abel—“the risk, girl, to you!”“Abel, dear, I am here to risk everything. I have risked everything to join you.”“Yes,” he said, hoarsely. “But afterwards. If we do escape?”“Leave the plans to me,” she said, with a little laugh. “I have boat and sail, and the world is very wide. Only escape. Take care; the men are coming back.”Mary’s voice ceased; and Abel took hold of Bart’s arm, rose, raised his hoe, and walked with him to where they had left off work, to begin again slowly, the two men trembling with excitement now; for, as the overseer neared them, a bird began flying to and fro over the edge of the jungle, screaming wildly, evidently from the fact that somebody was hidden there.The excitement of the bird, whose nest was probably somewhere near, did not, however, take the attention of the overseer, who came up, followed by the Irish sentry, stared hard at Abel, gave a short nod as if satisfied that one of his beasts of burden was not going to permanently break down, and then, to the horror of the young men, took off his hat, began fanning himself, and went and sat down in the very spot where Abel had talked with his sister!“Hot, Paddy, hot!” he said to the soldier.“Dinny, sor, av you plaze. Thrue for you, sor, and a taste of dhrink would be very nice for ye; but I shouldn’t sit there.”“Why not?” said the overseer.“Because the place swarms with them ugly, four-futted, scaly divils. I’ve gone the rounds here of a night, sor, and heard them snapping their jaws and thumping the wet mud with their tails till I’ve shivered again.”“Yes, there’s plenty of them in the creek, Dinny.”“Plinty, sor, ’s nothing to it. There niver seems to have been a blessed Saint Pathrick here to get rid of the varmin. Why, I’ve seen frogs here as big as turtles, and sarpints that would go round the Hill of Howth.”“Well, look here, Dinny, cock your piece, and if you see anything stir, let drive at it at once.”“Oi will, sor,” said the soldier, obeying orders; and, taking a step or two forward, he stood watchfully gazing into the dark jungle.“Have you got your knife, Bart?” whispered Abel, whose face was of a peculiar muddy hue.Bart nodded as he chopped away.“Shall we make a rush at them, and stun them with the hoes?”Bart shook his head.“Mary’s too clever,” he whispered back. “She’s well hidden, and will not stir.”“If that Irish beast raises his musket I must go at him,” whispered Abel, who was trembling from head to foot.“Hold up, man. She heer’d every word, and won’t stir.”“Silence, there. No talking!” cried the overseer.“Let the poor divils talk, sor,” said the soldier. “Faix, it’s bad enough to put chains on their legs; don’t put anny on their tongues.”“If I get you down,” thought Abel, “I won’t kill you, for that.”“Against orders,” said the overseer, good-humouredly. “Well, can you see anything stirring?”“Not yet, sor; but I hope I shall. Bedad, I’d be glad of a bit o’ sport, for it’s dhry work always carrying a gun about widout having a shot.”“Yes; but when you do get a shot, it’s at big game, Dinny.”“Yis, sor, but then it’s very seldom,” said the sentry, with a roguish twinkle of the eye.“I can’t bear this much longer, Bart,” whispered Abel. “When I sayNow! rush at them both with your hoe.”“Wait till he’s going to shoot, then,” growled Bart.The overseer bent down, and, sheltering himself beneath the tree, placed his hands out in the sunshine, one holding a roughly rolled cigar, the other a burning-glass, with which he soon focussed the vivid white spot of heat which made the end of the cigar begin to smoke, the tiny spark being drawn into incandescence by application to the man’s lips, while the pleasant odour of the burning leaf arose.“Sure, an’ that’s an illigant way of getting a light, sor,” said the sentry.“Easy enough with such a hot sun,” said the overseer, complacently.“Hot sun, sor! Sure I never carry my mushket here widout feeling as if it will go off in my hands; the barl gets nearly red-hot!”“Yah! Don’t point it this way,” said the overseer, smoking away coolly. “Well, can you see anything?”“Divil a thing but that noisy little omadhaun of a bird. Sure, she’d be a purty thing to have in a cage.”Abel’s face grew more ghastly as he gazed at Bart, who remained cool and controlled him.“Bart,” whispered Abel, with the sweat rolling off his face in beads, “what shall we do?”“Wait,” said the rough fellow shortly; and he hoed away, with his fetters clinking, and his eyes taking in every movement of the two men; while involuntarily Abel followed his action in every respect, as they once more drew nearer to their task-master and his guard.“There’s a something yonder, sor,” said the soldier at last.“Alligator!” said the overseer, lazily; and Abel’s heart rose so that he seemed as if he could not breathe.“I can’t see what it is, sor; but it’s a something, for the little burrud kapes darting down at it and floying up again. I belayve it is one of they crockidills. Shall I shute the divil?”“How can you shoot it if you can’t see it, you fool?” said the overseer.“Sure, sor, they say that every bullet has its billet, and if I let the little blue pill out of the mouth o’ the mushket, faix, it’s a strange thing if it don’t find its way into that ugly scaly baste.”The overseer took his cigar from his lips and laughed; but to the intense relief of the young men, perhaps to the saving of his own life, he shook his head.“No, Dinny,” he said, “it would alarm the station. They’d think someone was escaping. Let it be.”Dinny sighed, the overseer smoked on, and the hot silence of the tropic clearing was only broken by the screaming and chattering of the excited bird, the hum of insects, and the clink-clink, thud-thud, of fetters and hoe as the convicts toiled on in the glowing sun.They kept as near as they dared to their task-master, and he smiled superciliously as he put his own interpretation upon their acts.“The artful scoundrels!” he said to himself; “they want me to believe that they always work like this. Well, it helps the plantation;” and he smoked placidly on, little dreaming that every time Abel reversed his hoe, so as to break a clod with the back, the young man glanced at him and measured the distance between them, while he calculated how long to hold the handle of the tool, and where would be the best place to strike the enemy so as to disable him at once.“You take the soldier, Bart,” said Abel, softly. “I’ll manage the overseer.”“Right, lad! but not without we’re obliged.”“No. Then, as soon as they’re down, into the wood, find Mary, and make for her boat.”The heat was intense, the shade beneath the great cotton-tree grateful, and the aroma of the cigar so delicious that the overseer sank into a drowsy reverie; while the soldier gave the two convicts a half-laughing look and then turned to face the jungle, whose depths he pierced with his eyes.Bart drew a long breath and gazed toward the dark part of the jungle, and there was an intense look of love and satisfaction in his eyes as he tried to make out the place where Mary lay, as he believed, hidden. The sight of the sentry on the watch with his gun ready had ceased to trouble him, for he had told himself that the clumsy fellow could not hit a barn-door, let alone a smaller mark; while Abel seemed to be less agitated, and to be resuming his normal state.They were not twenty yards from the edge of the forest now, the sentry’s back was toward them, and the overseer was getting to the end of his cigar, and watching the watcher with half-closed eyes, and an amused smile upon his yellow countenance.“Every bullet finds its billet,” he muttered to himself; and, stretching himself, he was in the act of rising, when the bird, which had been silent, uttered a shrill, chattering cry, as if freshly disturbed, and the soldier shouted excitedly—“Theer, sor, I can see it. A big one staling away among the threes. For the sake of all the saints give the wurrud!”“Fire, then!” cried the overseer; and the sentry raised his piece to the “present.”Bart Wrigley had not been at sea from childhood without winning a sailor’s eyes. Dark as the jungle was, and more distant as he stood, it was not so black that he could not make out the object which had oaken the sentry’s notice, and at which he took aim.One moment Bart raised his hoe to rush at the man; the next he had brought it down heavily on Abel’s boulders, sending him forward upon his face, and uttering a cry of rage as he fell.It was almost simultaneous. The cry uttered by Abel Dell and the report of the sentry’s piece seemed to smite the air together; but Abel’s cry was first, and disarranged the soldier’s aim, his bullet cutting the leaves of the jungle far above the ground.“Look at that now!” he cried, as he turned sharply to see Abel struggling on the ground, with Bart holding him, and the overseer drawing a pistol front his breast.“Lie still!” whispered Bart. “It was not at Mary.”Then aloud—“Quick, here! water! He’s in a fit.”As Abel grasped his friend’s thoughts he lay back, struggling faintly, and then half-closed his eyes and was quite still.“It’s the sun, sir,” said Bart, as the overseer thrust back his pistol and came up. “Hadn’t we better get him back to the lines?”“Yes,” said the overseer. “Poor devil! No, no! Back, back!” he roared, signalling with his hands as a sergeant’s guard came along at the double. “Nothing wrong. Only a man sick, and Dinny Kelly here had a shot at an alligator.”“An’ I should have hit him, sor, if he hadn’t shouted. But think o’ that, now! The sun lights gentleman’s cigar one minute, and shtrikes a man down the next. But it’s better than the yaller fayver, anyhow.”Five days had passed, and the prisoners were not sent again to the clearing, while, in spite of every effort, they found that their chances of eluding the guard set over them by night were small indeed.Fettered by day, they were doubly chained by night. The building where they slept was strongly secured and guarded, and in spite of the newness of the settlement it was well chosen for its purpose, and stronger even than the prisoners thought.“We shall never get away by night, Bart,” said Abel, gloomily, “unless—”He stopped and gazed meaningly at his companion.“The knife?” responded Bart. “No, lad, we won’t do that. I shouldn’t like to go to Mary wet with blood.”Abel’s countenance grew dark and deeply hard, for at that moment, in his despair and disappointment, he felt ready to go to any extremity, knowing, as he did, that his sister was waiting for him, holding out her hands and saying, “Come!”Only another day, and then she would give up expecting them by night, and take to watching for them by day, when the attempt seemed hopeless.And so it proved, for during the following week the prisoners were only once in the coffee-plantation, and so strictly watched that they felt that to attempt an evasion was only to bring destruction upon their hopes, perhaps cause Mary’s imprisonment for attempting to assist prisoners to escape.“It’s of no use, Bart,” said Abel at last, despondently. “Poor girl! Why did she come?”“Help us away,” said Bart, gruffly.“Yes, but all in vain.”“Tchah! Wait a bit.”“Do you think she will still come and wait?” said Abel, dolefully.“Do I think th’ sun ’ll shine agen?” growled Bart. “Here’s a fellow! Born same time as that there lass, lived with her all his days, and then he knows so little about her that he says, ‘Will she come agen?’”“Enough to tire her out.”“Tchah!” cried Bart again, “when you know she’ll keep on coming till she’s an old grey-headed woman, or she gets us away.”Abel shook his head, for he was low-spirited and not convinced; but that night his heart leaped, for as he lay half asleep, listening to the thin buzzing hum of the mosquitoes which haunted the prisoners’ quarters, and the slow, regular pace of the sentry on guard outside, there was the faint rattle of a chain, as if some prisoner had turned in his unquiet rest, and then all was silent again, till he started, for a rough hand was laid upon his mouth.His first instinct was to seize the owner of that hand, to engage in a struggle for his life; but a mouth was placed directly at his ear, and a well-known voice whispered—“Don’t make a sound. Tie these bits of rag about your irons so as they don’t rattle.”Abel caught at the pieces of cloth and canvas thrust into his hand, and, sitting up in the darkness, he softly bound the links and rings of his fetters together, hardly daring to breathe, and yet with his heart beating tumultuously in his anxiety to know his companion’s plans.For an attempt it must be, Abel felt, though up to the time of their going to rest after the day’s work Bart had said nothing to him. He must have made a sudden discovery, and there was nothing for it but to obey in every way and trust to what was to come.Abel felt this as he rapidly knotted the rag round his chains, and as he was tying the last knot he felt Bart’s hand upon his shoulder, and his lips at his ear.“Quiet, and creep after me. Keep touching my foot so’s not to miss me in the dark.”Abel’s heart thumped against his ribs as he obeyed, taking Bart’s hand first in a firm grip, and then feeling a short iron bar thrust between his fingers.Then he became conscious from his companion’s movements that he had gone down upon his hands and knees, and was crawling toward the end of the long, low, stone-walled building that served as a dormitory for the white slaves whose task was to cultivate the rough plantation till they, as a rule, lay down and died from fever or some of the ills that haunted the tropic land.Just then Bart stopped short, for there were steps outside, and a gleam of light appeared beneath the heavy door. Voices were heard, and the rattle of a soldier’s musket.“Changing guard,” said Abel to himself; and he found himself wondering whether the sergeant and his men would enter the prison.To add to the risk of discovery, there was a shuffling sound on the left, and a clink of chains, as one man seemed to rise upon his elbow; and his movement roused another, who also clinked his chains in the darkness and growled out an imprecation.All this time Bart remained absolutely motionless, and Abel listened with the perspiration streaming from him in the intense heat.Then there was a hoarsely uttered command; the light faded away, the steps died out upon the ear; there was a clink or two of chains, and a heavy sigh from some restless sleeper, and once more in the black silence and stilling heat there was nothing to be heard but the loud trumpeting buzz of the mosquitoes.Softly, as some large cat, Bart resumed his crawling movement, after thrusting back his leg and touching Abel on the chest with his bare foot as a signal.The building was quite a hundred feet long by about eighteen wide, a mere gallery in shape, which had been lengthened from time to time as the number of convicts increased, and the men had about two-thirds of the distance to traverse before they could reach the end, and at their excessively slow rate of progress the time seemed interminable before, after several painful halts, caused by movements of their fellow-prisoners and dread of discovery, the final halt was made.“Now, then, what is it?” whispered Abel.The answer he received was a hand laid across his mouth, and his heart began to beat more wildly than ever, for Bart caught his hand, drew it toward him, and as it was yielded, directed the fingers downward to the stone level with the floor.Abel’s heart gave another bound, for that stone was loose, and as he was pressed aside he heard a faint gritting, his companion’s breath seemed to come more thickly, as if from exertion, and for the next hour—an hour that seemed like twelve—Abel lay, unable to help, but panting with anxiety, as the gritting noise went on, and he could mentally see that Bart was slowly drawing out rough pieces of badly-cemented stone—rough fragments really of coral and limestone from the nearest reef, of which the prison barrack was built.Three times over Abel had tried to help, but the firm pressure of his companion’s hand forcing him back spoke volume, and he subsided into his position in the utter darkness, listening with his pulses throbbing and subsiding, as the gritting sound was made or the reverse.At last, after what seemed an age, a faint breath of comparatively cool air began to play upon his cheek, as Bart seemed to work steadily on. That breath grew broader and fuller, and there was a soft odour of the sea mingled with the damp coolness of a breeze which had passed over the dewy ground before it began to set steadily in at the opening at which Bart had so patiently worked, for that there was an opening was plain enough now, as Abel exultantly felt.In his inaction the torture of the dread was intense, and he lay wondering whether, if they did get out, Mary would still be waiting, expecting them, or their efforts prove to have been in vain.At last, just when he felt as if he could bear it no longer, Bart’s hand gripped him by the shoulder, and pressed him tightly. Then in the darkness his hand was seized and guided where it hardly wanted guiding, for the young man’s imagination had painted all—to a rough opening level with the floor, a hole little larger than might have been made for fowls to pass in and out of a poultry-yard.This done, Bart gave him a thrust which Abel interpreted to mean, “Go on.”Abel responded with another, to indicate, “No; you go.”Bart gripped him savagely by the arm, and he yielded, crept slowly to the hole, went down upon his breast, and softly thrust his head through into the dank night air, to hear plainly the sighing and croaking of the reptiles in the swamp, and see before him the sparkling scintillations of the myriad fireflies darting from bush to bush.He wormed himself on, and was about to draw forth one hand and arm, but always moving as silently as some nocturnal beast of prey, when it suddenly occurred to him that the glow of one of the fireflies was unusually large; and before he had well grasped this idea there was the regular tramp of feet, and he knew that it was the lantern of the guard moving across to the prison barrack, and that they must come right past where he lay.He must creep back and wait; and as the steps steadily approached and the tramp grew plainer he began to wriggle himself through, getting his arm well in and his shoulders beginning to follow till only his head was outside, and the dull light of the lantern seeming to show it plainly, when to his horror he found that some portion of his garment had caught upon a rough projection and he was fast.He made a tremendous effort, but could not drag it free, for his arms were pressed close to his sides and he was helpless. If Bart had known and passed a hand through, he might have freed him, but he could not explain his position; and all the time the guard was coming nearer and nearer, the lantern-light dancing upon the rough path, until it would be hardly possible for the nearest soldier to pass him without stumbling against his head.Discovery, extra labour, the lash, more irons, and the chance of evasion gone; all those displayed, as it were, before Abel Dell’s gaze as he thought of his sister waiting for them with that boat all plainly seen by the gleaming light of that lantern as the soldiers came steadily on.It was absolutely impossible that the sergeant and his four men, whom the light had revealed quite plainly to Abel Dell, could pass him without something unusual occurred. The sergeant was carrying his lantern swinging at arm’s length, on his left side, and the bottom as he passed would only be a few inches above the prisoner’s head.Abel knew all this as he pressed his teeth together to keep down the agonising feeling of despair he felt already as the men came on in regular pace, with the barrels of the muskets and their bayonets gleaming, and he expected to hear an exclamation of astonishment with the command “Halt!”—when something unusual did happen.For all at once, just as the back of Abel’s head must have loomed up like a black stone close by the sergeant’s path, and the rays of light glistened on his short, crisp, black hair, there came a loud croaking bellow from down in the swamp by the crook, and Dinny exclaimed aloud:“Hark at that now!”“Silence in the ranks!” cried the sergeant fiercely; and then, as if the Irishman’s words were contagious, he, turning his head as did his men towards the spot whence the sound proceeded, exclaimed, “What was it?”“One of them lovely crockidills, sergeant dear—the swate craytures, with that plisant smile they have o’ their own. Hark at him again!”The same croaking roar arose, but more distant, as if it were the response to a challenge.“Don’t it carry you home again sergeant, dear?”“Silence in the—How, Dinny?” said the sergeant, good-humouredly, for the men were laughing.“Why, my mother had a cow—a Kerry cow, the darlint—and Farmer Magee, half a mile across the bog, had a bull, and you could hear him making love to her at toimes just like that, and moighty plisant it was.”“And used he to come across the bog,” said the sergeant, “to court her?”“And did he come across the bog to court her!” said Dinny, with a contemptuous tone in his voice. “And could you go across the bog courting if Farmer Magee had put a ring through your nose, and tied you up to a post, sergeant dear? Oh, no! The farmer was moighty particular about that bull’s morals, and niver let him out of a night.”“Silence in the ranks! ’Tention!” said the serjeant. “Half left!”Tramp! tramp! tramp! tramp, and the men passed round the end of the building just as the alligator bellowed again.Abel drew a long breath and rapidly drew himself through the hole—no easy task and Bart began follow, but only to stick before he was half-way through.“I’m at it again,” he whispered. “Natur’ made me crooked o’ purpose to go wrong at times like this.”Abel seized his hands, as he recalled the incident at the cottage.“Now,” he whispered, “both together—hard!”Bart gave himself a wrench as his companion tugged tremendously, and the resistance was overcome.“Half my skin,” growled Bart, as he struggled to his feet and stood by his companion. “Now, lad, this way.”“No, no; that’s the way the soldiers have gone.”“It’s the only way, lad. The dogs are yonder, and we couldn’t get over the palisade. Now!”They crept on in silence, seeing from time to time glints of the lantern, and in the midst of the still darkness matters seemed to be going so easily for them that Abel’s heart grew more regular in its pulsation, and he was just asking himself why he had not had invention enough to contrive this evasion, when a clear and familiar voice cried, “Shtand!” and there was the click of a musket-lock.What followed was almost momentary.Bart struck aside the bayonet levelled at his breast, and leaped upon the sentry before him, driving him backward and clapping his hand upon his mouth as he knelt upon his chest; while, ably seconding him, his companion wrested the musket from the man’s hand, twisted the bayonet from the end of the barrel, and, holding it daggerwise, pressed it against the man’s throat.“Hold aside, Bart,” whispered Abel, savagely.“No, no,” growled Bart. “No blood, lad.”“’Tis for our lives and liberty!” whispered Abel, fiercely.“Ay, but—” growled Bart. “Lie still, will you!” he muttered, as fiercely as his companion, for the sentry had given a violent heave and wrested his mouth free.“Sure, an’ ye won’t kill a poor boy that how, gintlemen,” he whispered, piteously.“Another word, and it’s your last!” hissed Abel.“Sure, and I’ll be as silent as Pater Mulloney’s grave, sor,” whispered the sentry; “but it’s a mother I have over in the owld country, and ye’d break her heart if ye killed me.”“Hold your tongue!” whispered Bart.“Sure, and I will, sor. It’s not meself as would stop a couple of gintlemen from escaping. There’s the gate, gintlemen. Ye’ve got my mushket, and I can’t stop you.”“Yes, come along,” whispered Bart.“What! and leave him to give the alarm?” said Abel. “We’re wasting time, man. ’Tis his life or ours.”“Not at all, sor,” whispered the sentry, pleadingly. “I won’t give the alarm, on my hanner; and you can’t kill a boy widout letting him just say, ‘How d’ye do?’ and ‘Which is the way yander?’ to the praste.”“Shall we trust him?” said Bart, in a low growl.“No!”“Then take me wid ye, gintlemen. Faix, ye might force me to go, for the divil a bit do I want to shtay here.”“Look here,” whispered Bart; “it’s neck or nothing, my lad. If you give the alarm, it will be with that bayonet struck through you.”“And would a Kelly give the alarm, afther he said on his hanner? Sure, you might thrust me.”“Over with you, then, Bart,” whispered Abel; “I’ll stand over him here. Take the gun.”Bart obeyed, and Abel stood with one hand upon the sentry’s shoulder, and the bayonet close to his throat.“An’ is that the way you thrust a gintleman?” said Dinny, contemptuously, as Bart, with all a sailor’s and rock-climber’s activity, drew himself up, and dropped from the top of the wall at the side.“Now, you over,” whispered Abel. “We shall take you with us till we’re safe; but so sure as you give warning of our escape, you lose your life!”“Ah! ye may thrust me,” said the sentry, quickly. “Is it over wid me?”“Yes; quick!”The man scaled the gate as easily as Bart had done before him, and then Abel followed; but as he reached the top and shuffled sidewise to the wall, which he bestrode, there was the sound of a shot, followed by another, and another, and the fierce baying of dogs.“Bedad, they’ve seen ye,” said the sentry, as Abel dropped down.“They’ve been in the barrack,” whispered Bart.“To be sure they have, sor; the sergeant was going round.”“Quick, take his hand!” said Bart.“No!” whispered Abel, levelling the bayonet.“No, no; for my mother’s sake, sor!” cried the sentry, piteously. “She has only six of us, and I’m one.”“Put away that bagnet!” said Bart, hoarsely. “Take his hand, and run!”“That’s it, sor, at the double,” said the sentry, rising from his knees, where he had flung himself. “I’m wid ye to the end of the world. It’s a place I know, and—”“Silence!” hissed Abel, as there was the loud clanging of a bell with the fierce yelping of dogs, and they dashed off, hand joined in hand, for the coffee-plantation, away down by the cane-brake and the swamp.

It was quite a week before the two young men were at work in the plantation of young trees again, and during all that time they had feverishly discussed the voice they had heard. Every time they had approached the borders of the plantation when it ran up to the virgin forest they had been on thequi vive, expecting to hear their names called again, but only to be disappointed; and, after due consideration, Abel placed a right interpretation upon the reason.

“It was someone who got ashore from a boat,” he said, “and managed to crawl up there. It’s the only place where anyone could get up.”

“Being nigh that creek, lad, where the crocodiles is,” said Bart. “Ay, you’re right. Who could it be?”

“One of our old mates.”

“Nay; no old mate would take all that trouble for us, lad. It’s someone Mary’s sent to bring us a letter and a bit of news.”

It was at night in the prison lines that Bart said this, and then he listened wonderingly in the dark, for he heard something like a sob from close to his elbow.

“Abel, matey!” he whispered.

“Don’t talk to me, old lad,” came back hoarsely after a time. And then, after a long silence, “Yes, you’re right. Poor lass—poor lass!”

“Say that again, Abel; say that again,” whispered Bart, excitedly.

“Poor lass! I’ve been too hard on her. She didn’t get us took.”

“Thank God!”

These were Bart’s hoarsely whispered words, choked with emotion; and directly after, as he lay there, Abel Dell felt a great, rough, trembling hand pass across his face and search about him till it reached his own, which it gripped and held with a strong, firm clasp, for there was beneath Bart’s rough, husk-like exterior a great deal of the true, loyal, loving material of which English gentlemen are made; and when towards morning those two prisoners fell asleep in their chains, hand was still gripped in hand, while the dreams that brightened the remaining hours of their rest from penal labour were very similar, being of a rough home down beneath Devon’s lovely cliffs, where the sea ran sparkling over the clean-washed pebbles, and the handsome face of Mary smiled upon each in turn.

“Abel, mate, I’m ready for anything now,” said Bart, as they went that morning to their work. “Only say again as you forgive our lass.”

“Bart, old lad,” said Abel, hoarsely, “I’ve nought to forgive.”

“Hah!” ejaculated Bart, and then he began to whistle softly as if in the highest of spirits, and looked longingly in the direction of the jungle beside the mud creek; but three days elapsed before they were set to hoe among the coffee bushes again.

Bart let his chin go down upon his chest on the morning when the order was given, and the overseer saw it and cracked his whip.

“You sulky ruffian!” he cried. “None of your sour looks with me. Get on with you!”

He cracked his whip again, and Bart shuffled off, clinking his fetters loudly.

“Do keep between us, Abel, lad,” he whispered, “or I shall go off and he’ll see. Oh, lor’, how I do want to laugh!”

He restrained his mirth for a time, and they walked on to the end of the plantation and began their task at the opposite end to where they had left off, when the rate at which their hoes were plied was such that they were not long before they began to near the dense jungle, beyond which lay the mangrove swamp and the sea.

“I daren’t hope, Bart,” whispered Abel, so despondently that his companion, in a wildly excited manner, laughed in his face.

“What a lad you are!” he cried. “It’s all right; he’s waiting for us. It’s some, sailor chap from Dartmouth, whose ship’s put in at Kingston or Belize. Cheer up, mate!”

But it was all a mockery; and when they approached the jungle at last, hoeing more slowly for, much as they longed to go up at once, they knew that any unusual movement on their part, might be interpreted by watchful eyes into an attempt at escape, and bring down upon them a shot. Bart’s voice trembled and sounded hoarsely as he said playfully—

“Now, Abel, my lad, I’m going to talk to that there poll parrot.”

“Hush!” whispered Abel, agitatedly. “Keep on quietly with your work till we get close, and then call softly.”

“Oh, it’s all straight, lad,” whispered back Bart, chopping away and breaking clods, as his fetters clanked more loudly than ever. “Now, then, Polly! Pretty Polly, are you there?”

“Yes, yes, Bart. Abel, dear brother, at last, at last!” came from the jungle.

“Mary—Polly, my girl!” cried Abel, hoarsely, as he threw down his hoe; and he was running toward the jungle, where a crashing sound was heard, when Bart flung his strong arms across his chest and dashed him to the ground.

“Are you mad!” he cried. “Mary, for God’s sake keep back!”

The warning was needed, for from across the plantation the overseer and a couple of soldiers came running, every movement on the part of the prisoners being watched.

“Sham ill, lad; sham ill,” whispered Bart, as a piteous sigh came from the depths of the jungle.

“Now, then, you two. Fighting again!” roared the overseer, as he came panting up.

“Fighting, sir!” growled Bart; “rum fighting. He nearly went down.”

“He was trying to escape.”

“Escape!” growled Bart. “Look at him. Sun’s hot.”

The overseer bent down over Abel, whose aspect helped the illusion, for he looked ghastly from his emotion; and he had presence of mind enough to open his eyes, look about, wildly from face to face, and then begin to struggle up, with one hand to his head.

“Is it the fayver, sor?” said one of the soldiers.

“No. Touch of the sun,” said the overseer. “They’re always getting it. There, you’re all right, ar’n’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” said Abel, slowly, as he picked up his hoe.

“Sit down under the trees there for a few minutes,” said the overseer. “Lend him your water bottle, soldier. And you stop with him till he’s hotter. I’ll come back soon.”

This last was to Bart, playing, as it were, into the prisoners’ hands, for Bart took the water bottle; and as the overseer went off with his guard, Abel was assisted to the edge of the jungle where a huge cotton-tree threw its shade; and here Bart placed him on an old stump, trembling the while, as he held the water to his companion’s lips.

It was hard work to keep still while the others went out of hearing; but at last it seemed safe, and Abel panted out—

“Mary, dear, are you there?”

“Yes, yes, Abel. Oh, my dear brother, say one kind word to me!”

“Kind word? Oh, my lass, my lass, say that you forgive me!”

“Forgive you? Yes. But quick, dear, before those men come back.”

“Tell me, then,” said Abel, speaking with his back to the jungle, and his head bent down as if ill, while Bart leaned over him, trembling like a leaf, “tell me how you came to be here.”

“I came over in a ship to Kingston. Then I went to New Orleans. Then to Honduras. And it was only a fortnight ago that I found you.”

“But how did you come here?”

“I’ve got a small boat, dear. I asked and asked for months before I could find out where you were. I’ve been to other plantations, and people have thought me mad; but one day I stumbled across the sailors of a ship that comes here with stores from the station, and I heard them say that there were a number of prisoners working at this place; and at last, after waiting and watching for weeks and weeks, I caught sight of you two, and then it was a month before I could speak to you as I did the other day.”

“And now you have come,” said Abel, bitterly, “I can’t even look at you.”

“But you will escape, dear,” said Mary.

“Escape!” cried Abel, excitedly.

“Steady, lad, steady. ’Member you’re ill,” growled Bart, glancing toward the nearest sentry, and then holding up the bottle as if to see how much was within.

“Yes, escape,” said Mary. “I have the boat ready. Can you come now?”

“Impossible! We should be overtaken and shot before we had gone a mile.”

“But you must escape,” said Mary. “You must get down here by night.”

“How?” said Bart, gruffly.

“You two must settle that,” said Mary, quickly. “I am only a woman; but I have found means to get here with a boat, and I can come again and again till you join me.”

“Yes,” said Abel, decidedly; “we will contrive that.”

“But is it safe, lass, where you are?”

“What do you mean?”

“They telled us there was the crocodiles all along that creek, and sharks out beyond, if we tried to run.”

“Yes,” said Mary, calmly, “there are plenty of these creatures about.”

“Listen,” said Abel, quickly, and speaking as decidedly now as his sister. “Can you get here night after night?”

“Yes,” said Mary. “I have been here every night since I spoke to you last.”

“Then keep on coming.”

“Yes,” said Mary; “I will till you escape.”

“You have the boat?”

“Yes.”

“And provisions?”

“Yes; a little.”

“But how do you manage?”

“I am fishing if any one sees me; but it is very lonely here. I see nothing but the birds,” she added to herself, “and sharks and alligators;” and as she said this she smiled sadly.

“Be careful, then,” said Abel. “Bart, old lad, we will escape.”

There was a loud expiration of the breath from the jungle, and Abel continued—

“I must get up and go on work, or they will be back. Mary, once more, you have a boat?”

“Yes.”

“And can come up here and wait?”

“Yes.”

Quick, short, decided answers each time.

“Then be cautious. Only come by night.”

“I know. Trust me. I will not be seen. I will do nothing rash. To-night as soon as it grows dark, I shall be here expecting you, for I shall not stir. At daybreak I shall go, and come again at night.”

“And mind the sentries.”

“Trust me, Abel. I shall not come now by day for six days. If at the end of six nights you have not been able to escape, I shall come for six days by day, hoping that you may be more successful in the daylight; for perhaps you will find that a bold dash will help you to get away.”

“But the risk—the risk?” panted Abel—“the risk, girl, to you!”

“Abel, dear, I am here to risk everything. I have risked everything to join you.”

“Yes,” he said, hoarsely. “But afterwards. If we do escape?”

“Leave the plans to me,” she said, with a little laugh. “I have boat and sail, and the world is very wide. Only escape. Take care; the men are coming back.”

Mary’s voice ceased; and Abel took hold of Bart’s arm, rose, raised his hoe, and walked with him to where they had left off work, to begin again slowly, the two men trembling with excitement now; for, as the overseer neared them, a bird began flying to and fro over the edge of the jungle, screaming wildly, evidently from the fact that somebody was hidden there.

The excitement of the bird, whose nest was probably somewhere near, did not, however, take the attention of the overseer, who came up, followed by the Irish sentry, stared hard at Abel, gave a short nod as if satisfied that one of his beasts of burden was not going to permanently break down, and then, to the horror of the young men, took off his hat, began fanning himself, and went and sat down in the very spot where Abel had talked with his sister!

“Hot, Paddy, hot!” he said to the soldier.

“Dinny, sor, av you plaze. Thrue for you, sor, and a taste of dhrink would be very nice for ye; but I shouldn’t sit there.”

“Why not?” said the overseer.

“Because the place swarms with them ugly, four-futted, scaly divils. I’ve gone the rounds here of a night, sor, and heard them snapping their jaws and thumping the wet mud with their tails till I’ve shivered again.”

“Yes, there’s plenty of them in the creek, Dinny.”

“Plinty, sor, ’s nothing to it. There niver seems to have been a blessed Saint Pathrick here to get rid of the varmin. Why, I’ve seen frogs here as big as turtles, and sarpints that would go round the Hill of Howth.”

“Well, look here, Dinny, cock your piece, and if you see anything stir, let drive at it at once.”

“Oi will, sor,” said the soldier, obeying orders; and, taking a step or two forward, he stood watchfully gazing into the dark jungle.

“Have you got your knife, Bart?” whispered Abel, whose face was of a peculiar muddy hue.

Bart nodded as he chopped away.

“Shall we make a rush at them, and stun them with the hoes?”

Bart shook his head.

“Mary’s too clever,” he whispered back. “She’s well hidden, and will not stir.”

“If that Irish beast raises his musket I must go at him,” whispered Abel, who was trembling from head to foot.

“Hold up, man. She heer’d every word, and won’t stir.”

“Silence, there. No talking!” cried the overseer.

“Let the poor divils talk, sor,” said the soldier. “Faix, it’s bad enough to put chains on their legs; don’t put anny on their tongues.”

“If I get you down,” thought Abel, “I won’t kill you, for that.”

“Against orders,” said the overseer, good-humouredly. “Well, can you see anything stirring?”

“Not yet, sor; but I hope I shall. Bedad, I’d be glad of a bit o’ sport, for it’s dhry work always carrying a gun about widout having a shot.”

“Yes; but when you do get a shot, it’s at big game, Dinny.”

“Yis, sor, but then it’s very seldom,” said the sentry, with a roguish twinkle of the eye.

“I can’t bear this much longer, Bart,” whispered Abel. “When I sayNow! rush at them both with your hoe.”

“Wait till he’s going to shoot, then,” growled Bart.

The overseer bent down, and, sheltering himself beneath the tree, placed his hands out in the sunshine, one holding a roughly rolled cigar, the other a burning-glass, with which he soon focussed the vivid white spot of heat which made the end of the cigar begin to smoke, the tiny spark being drawn into incandescence by application to the man’s lips, while the pleasant odour of the burning leaf arose.

“Sure, an’ that’s an illigant way of getting a light, sor,” said the sentry.

“Easy enough with such a hot sun,” said the overseer, complacently.

“Hot sun, sor! Sure I never carry my mushket here widout feeling as if it will go off in my hands; the barl gets nearly red-hot!”

“Yah! Don’t point it this way,” said the overseer, smoking away coolly. “Well, can you see anything?”

“Divil a thing but that noisy little omadhaun of a bird. Sure, she’d be a purty thing to have in a cage.”

Abel’s face grew more ghastly as he gazed at Bart, who remained cool and controlled him.

“Bart,” whispered Abel, with the sweat rolling off his face in beads, “what shall we do?”

“Wait,” said the rough fellow shortly; and he hoed away, with his fetters clinking, and his eyes taking in every movement of the two men; while involuntarily Abel followed his action in every respect, as they once more drew nearer to their task-master and his guard.

“There’s a something yonder, sor,” said the soldier at last.

“Alligator!” said the overseer, lazily; and Abel’s heart rose so that he seemed as if he could not breathe.

“I can’t see what it is, sor; but it’s a something, for the little burrud kapes darting down at it and floying up again. I belayve it is one of they crockidills. Shall I shute the divil?”

“How can you shoot it if you can’t see it, you fool?” said the overseer.

“Sure, sor, they say that every bullet has its billet, and if I let the little blue pill out of the mouth o’ the mushket, faix, it’s a strange thing if it don’t find its way into that ugly scaly baste.”

The overseer took his cigar from his lips and laughed; but to the intense relief of the young men, perhaps to the saving of his own life, he shook his head.

“No, Dinny,” he said, “it would alarm the station. They’d think someone was escaping. Let it be.”

Dinny sighed, the overseer smoked on, and the hot silence of the tropic clearing was only broken by the screaming and chattering of the excited bird, the hum of insects, and the clink-clink, thud-thud, of fetters and hoe as the convicts toiled on in the glowing sun.

They kept as near as they dared to their task-master, and he smiled superciliously as he put his own interpretation upon their acts.

“The artful scoundrels!” he said to himself; “they want me to believe that they always work like this. Well, it helps the plantation;” and he smoked placidly on, little dreaming that every time Abel reversed his hoe, so as to break a clod with the back, the young man glanced at him and measured the distance between them, while he calculated how long to hold the handle of the tool, and where would be the best place to strike the enemy so as to disable him at once.

“You take the soldier, Bart,” said Abel, softly. “I’ll manage the overseer.”

“Right, lad! but not without we’re obliged.”

“No. Then, as soon as they’re down, into the wood, find Mary, and make for her boat.”

The heat was intense, the shade beneath the great cotton-tree grateful, and the aroma of the cigar so delicious that the overseer sank into a drowsy reverie; while the soldier gave the two convicts a half-laughing look and then turned to face the jungle, whose depths he pierced with his eyes.

Bart drew a long breath and gazed toward the dark part of the jungle, and there was an intense look of love and satisfaction in his eyes as he tried to make out the place where Mary lay, as he believed, hidden. The sight of the sentry on the watch with his gun ready had ceased to trouble him, for he had told himself that the clumsy fellow could not hit a barn-door, let alone a smaller mark; while Abel seemed to be less agitated, and to be resuming his normal state.

They were not twenty yards from the edge of the forest now, the sentry’s back was toward them, and the overseer was getting to the end of his cigar, and watching the watcher with half-closed eyes, and an amused smile upon his yellow countenance.

“Every bullet finds its billet,” he muttered to himself; and, stretching himself, he was in the act of rising, when the bird, which had been silent, uttered a shrill, chattering cry, as if freshly disturbed, and the soldier shouted excitedly—

“Theer, sor, I can see it. A big one staling away among the threes. For the sake of all the saints give the wurrud!”

“Fire, then!” cried the overseer; and the sentry raised his piece to the “present.”

Bart Wrigley had not been at sea from childhood without winning a sailor’s eyes. Dark as the jungle was, and more distant as he stood, it was not so black that he could not make out the object which had oaken the sentry’s notice, and at which he took aim.

One moment Bart raised his hoe to rush at the man; the next he had brought it down heavily on Abel’s boulders, sending him forward upon his face, and uttering a cry of rage as he fell.

It was almost simultaneous. The cry uttered by Abel Dell and the report of the sentry’s piece seemed to smite the air together; but Abel’s cry was first, and disarranged the soldier’s aim, his bullet cutting the leaves of the jungle far above the ground.

“Look at that now!” he cried, as he turned sharply to see Abel struggling on the ground, with Bart holding him, and the overseer drawing a pistol front his breast.

“Lie still!” whispered Bart. “It was not at Mary.”

Then aloud—

“Quick, here! water! He’s in a fit.”

As Abel grasped his friend’s thoughts he lay back, struggling faintly, and then half-closed his eyes and was quite still.

“It’s the sun, sir,” said Bart, as the overseer thrust back his pistol and came up. “Hadn’t we better get him back to the lines?”

“Yes,” said the overseer. “Poor devil! No, no! Back, back!” he roared, signalling with his hands as a sergeant’s guard came along at the double. “Nothing wrong. Only a man sick, and Dinny Kelly here had a shot at an alligator.”

“An’ I should have hit him, sor, if he hadn’t shouted. But think o’ that, now! The sun lights gentleman’s cigar one minute, and shtrikes a man down the next. But it’s better than the yaller fayver, anyhow.”

Five days had passed, and the prisoners were not sent again to the clearing, while, in spite of every effort, they found that their chances of eluding the guard set over them by night were small indeed.

Fettered by day, they were doubly chained by night. The building where they slept was strongly secured and guarded, and in spite of the newness of the settlement it was well chosen for its purpose, and stronger even than the prisoners thought.

“We shall never get away by night, Bart,” said Abel, gloomily, “unless—”

He stopped and gazed meaningly at his companion.

“The knife?” responded Bart. “No, lad, we won’t do that. I shouldn’t like to go to Mary wet with blood.”

Abel’s countenance grew dark and deeply hard, for at that moment, in his despair and disappointment, he felt ready to go to any extremity, knowing, as he did, that his sister was waiting for him, holding out her hands and saying, “Come!”

Only another day, and then she would give up expecting them by night, and take to watching for them by day, when the attempt seemed hopeless.

And so it proved, for during the following week the prisoners were only once in the coffee-plantation, and so strictly watched that they felt that to attempt an evasion was only to bring destruction upon their hopes, perhaps cause Mary’s imprisonment for attempting to assist prisoners to escape.

“It’s of no use, Bart,” said Abel at last, despondently. “Poor girl! Why did she come?”

“Help us away,” said Bart, gruffly.

“Yes, but all in vain.”

“Tchah! Wait a bit.”

“Do you think she will still come and wait?” said Abel, dolefully.

“Do I think th’ sun ’ll shine agen?” growled Bart. “Here’s a fellow! Born same time as that there lass, lived with her all his days, and then he knows so little about her that he says, ‘Will she come agen?’”

“Enough to tire her out.”

“Tchah!” cried Bart again, “when you know she’ll keep on coming till she’s an old grey-headed woman, or she gets us away.”

Abel shook his head, for he was low-spirited and not convinced; but that night his heart leaped, for as he lay half asleep, listening to the thin buzzing hum of the mosquitoes which haunted the prisoners’ quarters, and the slow, regular pace of the sentry on guard outside, there was the faint rattle of a chain, as if some prisoner had turned in his unquiet rest, and then all was silent again, till he started, for a rough hand was laid upon his mouth.

His first instinct was to seize the owner of that hand, to engage in a struggle for his life; but a mouth was placed directly at his ear, and a well-known voice whispered—

“Don’t make a sound. Tie these bits of rag about your irons so as they don’t rattle.”

Abel caught at the pieces of cloth and canvas thrust into his hand, and, sitting up in the darkness, he softly bound the links and rings of his fetters together, hardly daring to breathe, and yet with his heart beating tumultuously in his anxiety to know his companion’s plans.

For an attempt it must be, Abel felt, though up to the time of their going to rest after the day’s work Bart had said nothing to him. He must have made a sudden discovery, and there was nothing for it but to obey in every way and trust to what was to come.

Abel felt this as he rapidly knotted the rag round his chains, and as he was tying the last knot he felt Bart’s hand upon his shoulder, and his lips at his ear.

“Quiet, and creep after me. Keep touching my foot so’s not to miss me in the dark.”

Abel’s heart thumped against his ribs as he obeyed, taking Bart’s hand first in a firm grip, and then feeling a short iron bar thrust between his fingers.

Then he became conscious from his companion’s movements that he had gone down upon his hands and knees, and was crawling toward the end of the long, low, stone-walled building that served as a dormitory for the white slaves whose task was to cultivate the rough plantation till they, as a rule, lay down and died from fever or some of the ills that haunted the tropic land.

Just then Bart stopped short, for there were steps outside, and a gleam of light appeared beneath the heavy door. Voices were heard, and the rattle of a soldier’s musket.

“Changing guard,” said Abel to himself; and he found himself wondering whether the sergeant and his men would enter the prison.

To add to the risk of discovery, there was a shuffling sound on the left, and a clink of chains, as one man seemed to rise upon his elbow; and his movement roused another, who also clinked his chains in the darkness and growled out an imprecation.

All this time Bart remained absolutely motionless, and Abel listened with the perspiration streaming from him in the intense heat.

Then there was a hoarsely uttered command; the light faded away, the steps died out upon the ear; there was a clink or two of chains, and a heavy sigh from some restless sleeper, and once more in the black silence and stilling heat there was nothing to be heard but the loud trumpeting buzz of the mosquitoes.

Softly, as some large cat, Bart resumed his crawling movement, after thrusting back his leg and touching Abel on the chest with his bare foot as a signal.

The building was quite a hundred feet long by about eighteen wide, a mere gallery in shape, which had been lengthened from time to time as the number of convicts increased, and the men had about two-thirds of the distance to traverse before they could reach the end, and at their excessively slow rate of progress the time seemed interminable before, after several painful halts, caused by movements of their fellow-prisoners and dread of discovery, the final halt was made.

“Now, then, what is it?” whispered Abel.

The answer he received was a hand laid across his mouth, and his heart began to beat more wildly than ever, for Bart caught his hand, drew it toward him, and as it was yielded, directed the fingers downward to the stone level with the floor.

Abel’s heart gave another bound, for that stone was loose, and as he was pressed aside he heard a faint gritting, his companion’s breath seemed to come more thickly, as if from exertion, and for the next hour—an hour that seemed like twelve—Abel lay, unable to help, but panting with anxiety, as the gritting noise went on, and he could mentally see that Bart was slowly drawing out rough pieces of badly-cemented stone—rough fragments really of coral and limestone from the nearest reef, of which the prison barrack was built.

Three times over Abel had tried to help, but the firm pressure of his companion’s hand forcing him back spoke volume, and he subsided into his position in the utter darkness, listening with his pulses throbbing and subsiding, as the gritting sound was made or the reverse.

At last, after what seemed an age, a faint breath of comparatively cool air began to play upon his cheek, as Bart seemed to work steadily on. That breath grew broader and fuller, and there was a soft odour of the sea mingled with the damp coolness of a breeze which had passed over the dewy ground before it began to set steadily in at the opening at which Bart had so patiently worked, for that there was an opening was plain enough now, as Abel exultantly felt.

In his inaction the torture of the dread was intense, and he lay wondering whether, if they did get out, Mary would still be waiting, expecting them, or their efforts prove to have been in vain.

At last, just when he felt as if he could bear it no longer, Bart’s hand gripped him by the shoulder, and pressed him tightly. Then in the darkness his hand was seized and guided where it hardly wanted guiding, for the young man’s imagination had painted all—to a rough opening level with the floor, a hole little larger than might have been made for fowls to pass in and out of a poultry-yard.

This done, Bart gave him a thrust which Abel interpreted to mean, “Go on.”

Abel responded with another, to indicate, “No; you go.”

Bart gripped him savagely by the arm, and he yielded, crept slowly to the hole, went down upon his breast, and softly thrust his head through into the dank night air, to hear plainly the sighing and croaking of the reptiles in the swamp, and see before him the sparkling scintillations of the myriad fireflies darting from bush to bush.

He wormed himself on, and was about to draw forth one hand and arm, but always moving as silently as some nocturnal beast of prey, when it suddenly occurred to him that the glow of one of the fireflies was unusually large; and before he had well grasped this idea there was the regular tramp of feet, and he knew that it was the lantern of the guard moving across to the prison barrack, and that they must come right past where he lay.

He must creep back and wait; and as the steps steadily approached and the tramp grew plainer he began to wriggle himself through, getting his arm well in and his shoulders beginning to follow till only his head was outside, and the dull light of the lantern seeming to show it plainly, when to his horror he found that some portion of his garment had caught upon a rough projection and he was fast.

He made a tremendous effort, but could not drag it free, for his arms were pressed close to his sides and he was helpless. If Bart had known and passed a hand through, he might have freed him, but he could not explain his position; and all the time the guard was coming nearer and nearer, the lantern-light dancing upon the rough path, until it would be hardly possible for the nearest soldier to pass him without stumbling against his head.

Discovery, extra labour, the lash, more irons, and the chance of evasion gone; all those displayed, as it were, before Abel Dell’s gaze as he thought of his sister waiting for them with that boat all plainly seen by the gleaming light of that lantern as the soldiers came steadily on.

It was absolutely impossible that the sergeant and his four men, whom the light had revealed quite plainly to Abel Dell, could pass him without something unusual occurred. The sergeant was carrying his lantern swinging at arm’s length, on his left side, and the bottom as he passed would only be a few inches above the prisoner’s head.

Abel knew all this as he pressed his teeth together to keep down the agonising feeling of despair he felt already as the men came on in regular pace, with the barrels of the muskets and their bayonets gleaming, and he expected to hear an exclamation of astonishment with the command “Halt!”—when something unusual did happen.

For all at once, just as the back of Abel’s head must have loomed up like a black stone close by the sergeant’s path, and the rays of light glistened on his short, crisp, black hair, there came a loud croaking bellow from down in the swamp by the crook, and Dinny exclaimed aloud:

“Hark at that now!”

“Silence in the ranks!” cried the sergeant fiercely; and then, as if the Irishman’s words were contagious, he, turning his head as did his men towards the spot whence the sound proceeded, exclaimed, “What was it?”

“One of them lovely crockidills, sergeant dear—the swate craytures, with that plisant smile they have o’ their own. Hark at him again!”

The same croaking roar arose, but more distant, as if it were the response to a challenge.

“Don’t it carry you home again sergeant, dear?”

“Silence in the—How, Dinny?” said the sergeant, good-humouredly, for the men were laughing.

“Why, my mother had a cow—a Kerry cow, the darlint—and Farmer Magee, half a mile across the bog, had a bull, and you could hear him making love to her at toimes just like that, and moighty plisant it was.”

“And used he to come across the bog,” said the sergeant, “to court her?”

“And did he come across the bog to court her!” said Dinny, with a contemptuous tone in his voice. “And could you go across the bog courting if Farmer Magee had put a ring through your nose, and tied you up to a post, sergeant dear? Oh, no! The farmer was moighty particular about that bull’s morals, and niver let him out of a night.”

“Silence in the ranks! ’Tention!” said the serjeant. “Half left!”

Tramp! tramp! tramp! tramp, and the men passed round the end of the building just as the alligator bellowed again.

Abel drew a long breath and rapidly drew himself through the hole—no easy task and Bart began follow, but only to stick before he was half-way through.

“I’m at it again,” he whispered. “Natur’ made me crooked o’ purpose to go wrong at times like this.”

Abel seized his hands, as he recalled the incident at the cottage.

“Now,” he whispered, “both together—hard!”

Bart gave himself a wrench as his companion tugged tremendously, and the resistance was overcome.

“Half my skin,” growled Bart, as he struggled to his feet and stood by his companion. “Now, lad, this way.”

“No, no; that’s the way the soldiers have gone.”

“It’s the only way, lad. The dogs are yonder, and we couldn’t get over the palisade. Now!”

They crept on in silence, seeing from time to time glints of the lantern, and in the midst of the still darkness matters seemed to be going so easily for them that Abel’s heart grew more regular in its pulsation, and he was just asking himself why he had not had invention enough to contrive this evasion, when a clear and familiar voice cried, “Shtand!” and there was the click of a musket-lock.

What followed was almost momentary.

Bart struck aside the bayonet levelled at his breast, and leaped upon the sentry before him, driving him backward and clapping his hand upon his mouth as he knelt upon his chest; while, ably seconding him, his companion wrested the musket from the man’s hand, twisted the bayonet from the end of the barrel, and, holding it daggerwise, pressed it against the man’s throat.

“Hold aside, Bart,” whispered Abel, savagely.

“No, no,” growled Bart. “No blood, lad.”

“’Tis for our lives and liberty!” whispered Abel, fiercely.

“Ay, but—” growled Bart. “Lie still, will you!” he muttered, as fiercely as his companion, for the sentry had given a violent heave and wrested his mouth free.

“Sure, an’ ye won’t kill a poor boy that how, gintlemen,” he whispered, piteously.

“Another word, and it’s your last!” hissed Abel.

“Sure, and I’ll be as silent as Pater Mulloney’s grave, sor,” whispered the sentry; “but it’s a mother I have over in the owld country, and ye’d break her heart if ye killed me.”

“Hold your tongue!” whispered Bart.

“Sure, and I will, sor. It’s not meself as would stop a couple of gintlemen from escaping. There’s the gate, gintlemen. Ye’ve got my mushket, and I can’t stop you.”

“Yes, come along,” whispered Bart.

“What! and leave him to give the alarm?” said Abel. “We’re wasting time, man. ’Tis his life or ours.”

“Not at all, sor,” whispered the sentry, pleadingly. “I won’t give the alarm, on my hanner; and you can’t kill a boy widout letting him just say, ‘How d’ye do?’ and ‘Which is the way yander?’ to the praste.”

“Shall we trust him?” said Bart, in a low growl.

“No!”

“Then take me wid ye, gintlemen. Faix, ye might force me to go, for the divil a bit do I want to shtay here.”

“Look here,” whispered Bart; “it’s neck or nothing, my lad. If you give the alarm, it will be with that bayonet struck through you.”

“And would a Kelly give the alarm, afther he said on his hanner? Sure, you might thrust me.”

“Over with you, then, Bart,” whispered Abel; “I’ll stand over him here. Take the gun.”

Bart obeyed, and Abel stood with one hand upon the sentry’s shoulder, and the bayonet close to his throat.

“An’ is that the way you thrust a gintleman?” said Dinny, contemptuously, as Bart, with all a sailor’s and rock-climber’s activity, drew himself up, and dropped from the top of the wall at the side.

“Now, you over,” whispered Abel. “We shall take you with us till we’re safe; but so sure as you give warning of our escape, you lose your life!”

“Ah! ye may thrust me,” said the sentry, quickly. “Is it over wid me?”

“Yes; quick!”

The man scaled the gate as easily as Bart had done before him, and then Abel followed; but as he reached the top and shuffled sidewise to the wall, which he bestrode, there was the sound of a shot, followed by another, and another, and the fierce baying of dogs.

“Bedad, they’ve seen ye,” said the sentry, as Abel dropped down.

“They’ve been in the barrack,” whispered Bart.

“To be sure they have, sor; the sergeant was going round.”

“Quick, take his hand!” said Bart.

“No!” whispered Abel, levelling the bayonet.

“No, no; for my mother’s sake, sor!” cried the sentry, piteously. “She has only six of us, and I’m one.”

“Put away that bagnet!” said Bart, hoarsely. “Take his hand, and run!”

“That’s it, sor, at the double,” said the sentry, rising from his knees, where he had flung himself. “I’m wid ye to the end of the world. It’s a place I know, and—”

“Silence!” hissed Abel, as there was the loud clanging of a bell with the fierce yelping of dogs, and they dashed off, hand joined in hand, for the coffee-plantation, away down by the cane-brake and the swamp.

Back to IndexNext