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,
