‘What nonsense you are talking, Jessica,’ said Quita querulously, as she turned her head away. ‘Papa’s carriage is quite good enough for me, and I don’t want any other.’
‘Ah, but some day my missy marry fine gennelman, and have everyting dat’s nice and beautiful. Not one of dese island fellers—overseers and such like,’ continued the negress contemptuously, ‘with half de blood black in their veins, but a real English gennelman, with plenty money, and all white blood.’
Maraquita reddened, and yawned, and turned pettishly away. She knew well enough to whom old Jessica was alluding, and she resented the hint as an impertinence.
Meanwhile Sir Russell Johnstone had rushed into the presence of Mr and Mrs Courtney.
‘Fancy, my dear sir,’ he was exclaiming, ‘that yesterday the police actually discovered a train of gunpowder laid right under the banqueting-room of Government House! Had it not been for their vigilance, at the next dinner-party I gave, we might all have been blown up—I, you, your wife, even your lovely daughter. It is too horrible a catastrophe to contemplate!’
‘Horrible indeed!’ echoed his host. ‘But are you sure that all is now safe? Has a thorough search been made?’
‘They tell me so, and that I need have no further alarm. But it has shaken my nerves, I can tell you that. And the delinquents are not caught either, though the native police are on the alert.’
‘How is that?’
‘They have escaped to the Alligator Swamp; though why they can’t pursue them there, beats me altogether.’
‘Ah, my dear Sir Russell,’ cried Mr Courtney, ‘you don’t know what the Alligator Swamp is like, or you would not be surprised. Even a negro will not venture to enter it, unless he is in fear of his life. It is a regular morass of green slime. It is impossible to tell at each step you take whether you will sink to the bottom of it or not; and it is infested with alligators or caymen of the largest and most ferocious breed. No living creatures but the caymen could breathe such an atmosphere; for the green swamp raises poisonous fungi, the vapours alone of which are almost certain death. These wretches who have plotted against your life cannot possibly escape punishment. If they do not fall into the hands of the police, they will certainly die, the victims of the pestilential atmosphere of the Alligator Swamp.’