side of the island. You and your guard here are as handsome a set of blacks as a yellow woman need wish to look on. Not a morsel would have been left of any one of you the size of my hand!"
"Golly!" exclaimed Hippolyte in consternation. "Missee Célandine, you go free for tanks, when this job clean done. Hi! you black fellows, keep under shadow of gum-tree dere—change um plan now," he added, thoughtfully; and without taking his keen eyes off Célandine, walked from one to the other of his band, whispering fresh instructions to each.
The Quadroon counted the time by the beating of her heart. "Now," she thought, "my boy must have gained the edge of the forest—ten minutes more to cross the new cane-pieces—another ten to reach the shore. He can swim of course—his father swam like a pilot-fish. In forty minutes he might be on board. Five to man a boat—and ten more to pull her in against the ebb. Then they have fully a league to march, and sailors are such bad walkers." At this stage of her reflections something went through her heart like a knife. She thought of the grim ground-sharks, heaving and gaping in the warm translucent depths of the harbour at Port Welcome.
But meanwhile Hippolyte had gathered confidence from the bearing of his comrades. Their numbers and fierceness inspired him with courage, and he resolved to enter the house at the head of his chosen body-guard, whilst he surrounded it with a score of additional mutineers who had joined him according to previous agreement at the head of the forest. These, too, had brought with them a fresh supply of rum, and Célandine observed with horror its stimulating effects on the evil propensities of the band.
While he made his further dispositions, she found herself left for a few seconds comparatively unwatched, and at once stole into the open moonlight, where her white dress could be discerned plainly from the house. She knew her husband would be smoking his evening tobacco, according to custom, in the verandah. At little more than a hundred paces he could hardly fail to see her; and in an instant she had unbound the red turban and waved it round her head, in the desperate hope that he might accept that warning for a
