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 the qui 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
