On the following morning, the 23rd of August, Monsieur Duchesne started as usual soon after seven o'clock, for the heat was now intense, and it was dangerous to be out after the sun had obtained its full power. An hour later Nat was sitting in the verandah behind the house with Madame Duchesne and Myra, when an old negress ran out; her eyes were wide open with terror and excitement, and her face was almost pale.
"Madame and mam'selle must fly and hide themselves!" she exclaimed. "Nigger come in half an hour ago wid news dat slabes rise last night in many places all ober de country and kill all de whites. Dinah hear dat all people expect dat, only not for anober two days. Oberseers de leaders now. Dey come here quick wid all de field hands. Not a moment to be lost. Fly for your libes!"
"Impossible!" Madame Duchesne exclaimed, as she and Myra sprang to their feet alarmed, but incredulous.
"It may be true, madame," Nat exclaimed. "For God's sake run with Myra in among the shrubbery there; I will join you in a moment. If it is a false alarm all the better; but it may be true, and there is not a moment to lose. Do you hear those shouts?"
A burst of yells and shouts rose in the air a short distance away.
"Run! run!" Nat exclaimed as he dashed into the house, rushed to the closet in the hall, seized two brace of pistols, a sword, and half a dozen packets of cartridges for the pistols, and then ran out into the verandah just in time to see the white dresses of the ladies disappear into the shrubbery close to the entrance of the verandah. Some wraps which they sometimes put on to keep off the evening dew when they were sitting out of doors were hung up close by him. Hastily snatching these off their hooks, he dashed off at full speed, for the tumult was now approaching the front of the house. The ladies had stopped just within the cover of the bushes. "Run!" he cried; "there is not a moment to lose. They will be searching for us as soon as they find that we are not in the house."
The belt of foliage extended all round the garden, and, keeping inside, they ran to the other end. Fortunately, adjoining the garden was a plantation of sugar-cane which had not yet been cut, for although the greater portion of the cane is cut in April, freshly made plantations planted at that time are not fit to cut until the autumn of the following year. The canes were ten feet high, and as the rows were three feet apart, there was plenty of room to run between them. Scarcely a word was spoken as they hurried along. The plantation was some four hundred yards across; beyond it stretched another of equal size, extending to the edge of the forest. The canes here, which had been cut four months before, were three feet high; at other times many negroes would have been at work hoeing the ground round the roots, but when Nat looked out cautiously from the edge of the higher canes not a soul was to be seen.
"I think it is perfectly safe," he said; "but you had better put on the dark wraps, your light dresses would be seen a long distance away. We had better move a short distance farther to the right before we attempt to go straight on. If you will walk one after the other, treading in each other's steps, I will take off my shoes and follow you; that will destroy your traces, and the marks of my bare feet might be taken for those of a negro. Please do not lose a moment," he said, as he saw that Madame Duchesne was about to speak; "there will be time to talk when we get into the forest and settle what we had best do."
They had gone but a few yards when Nat's eye caught sight of a hoe lying on the ground a short distance along one of the rows of the young canes. He ran and fetched it, the others stopping while he did so. Then as he went along he carefully obliterated his footsteps, and continued to do so until when, after walking thirty or forty yards farther, he turned into the young plantation. The surface of the ground was almost dust-dry, and between the rows of the growing canes a track had been worn by the feet of the slaves, who every two or three days hoed round the roots; here, therefore, there was no occasion to use the hoe, as the ground was so hard that his feet left no marks upon it. In a few minutes they entered the wood and went in some little distance; then they stopped. They could still hear the yells of the negroes, who, Nat doubted not, were engaged in plundering the house, after which he felt sure that there would be an eager search for the fugitives.
The ground had been rising all the way.