"Good-bye, Myra; I hope that when I see you again you will have got that dye off your face, and that you will be none the worse for what you have gone through."
The girl's lip quivered.
"Good-bye, Nat. I do so hope your wound will soon heal."
"You are fortunate, indeed, in having escaped," Monsieur Laurent said as they turned away. "From all we hear, I fear that very few of the whites, except in plantations quite near the towns, have escaped. It is strange that the house servants, who in most cases have been all their lives with their masters and mistresses, and who have almost always been treated as kindly as if they were members of the family, should not have warned them of what was coming."
"I should think that very few of them knew," Nat replied. "They were known to be attached to their masters and mistresses, and would hardly have been trusted by the others. I cannot think so badly of human nature as to believe that a people who have been so long in close connection with their masters should, in almost every case, have kept silent when they knew that there was a plot to massacre them."
"Well, I will say good-morning," Monsieur Laurent said. "I want to be back with the troops. I was detained yesterday, to my great disgust, to see to the getting-off of a freight, and I should not like to miss another chance of paying some of the scoundrels off."
Nat made his way slowly and carefully—for the slightest movement gave him great pain—to the wharf. One of the frigate's boats was ashore. The coxswain looked at him with surprise as he went down the steps to it.
"Well, I'm jiggered," the man muttered, "if it ain't Mr. Glover!" Then he said aloud: "Glad to see you back, sir. The ship's crew were all glad when they heard the other day that the news had come as how you were safe, for we had all been afraid you had been murdered by them niggers. You are looking mighty queer, sir, if I may say so."
"My face is stained to make me look like a mulatto. Whom are you waiting for?"
"For Mr. Normandy."