"Well, I must see if I can find her, Myra. If not, I must use the charcoal, but certainly the other would be much the safer; and, you see, thanks to my long stay with you before, I have got to speak French very fairly now."
The day passed slowly. Occasionally they heard shouts lower down in the forest, but these did not come near them, and after a time died away.
"I thought they would hardly come up as far as this," Nat said; "negroes are not given to work unless they are obliged to, and they will find it so pleasant doing nothing that they are hardly likely to give themselves the trouble to search very far for us. Besides, doubtless they have other things to think about. They will know that their work has only begun when they have burnt their masters' houses, and killed all the white people they can lay their hands upon, and that until they have taken possession of the towns they are not masters of the island. No doubt, too, they carried out the wine before they burnt the house."
"Besides," Myra said, "there is the rum store; there are at least a hundred barrels there."
"Yes, I did not think of that. Well, I expect that before this the greater part of them are drunk, and I don't suppose there will be a sober man left to-night. That will make it an easy business for me to find out what they are doing, and to get hold of the things that will be useful to you. I am more afraid of the mulattoes than of the negroes."
"Do you think that they would join the blacks?"
"I have no doubt at all about it—I feel sure they have done so. I saw three of them talking together yesterday; they were paying no attention to the slaves, and I thought then that it was rather peculiar. Besides, we know that these lower class of mulattoes are as hostile to the whites as the negroes are, if not more so, and I have no doubt they have had a good deal to do with exciting the slaves to revolt. And now, Madame Duchesne, I will go down through the woods and get you some sugar-cane, and look for a stream."
Madame Duchesne protested, but she was accustomed to have every want supplied as soon as expressed, and she was suffering much from thirst after the excitement and effort.
"You really require something," Nat went on. "You see, if I go down after dark I may be away for two or three hours, and were you to wait till then you would be in a fever with thirst. It is evident that the negroes have all left the wood, therefore there can be no risk in my going down and cutting a dozen of the young canes."
"If you go," she said firmly, sitting up as she spoke, "you must leave me two of your pistols—they are double-barrelled, are they not?"