"There is one other thing, Dinah. Can you tell me where to find a hand-barrow? I expect we shall have to carry your mistress."
"Me know de sort ob ting dat you want, sah, dey carry tobacco leabes on dem. Dere are a dozen ob dem lying outside de end store."
"All right, Dinah, I will take one as I go past. Now I will go."
So saying, he turned and made his way to the overseers' house. He crept softly along to a lighted window. When in a line with it he stood up for a minute, knowing that those inside would not be able to see him, there being a screen of trees just behind him. The three mulattoes whom he had seen talking together in the field on the previous day were seated round a table. On it were placed two or three wine-glasses. All were smoking.
"To-morrow we must get those drunken black hogs to work," one said, "and have a regular search through the woods. Everything has gone well except the escape of madame and her gal. Someone must have warned them. The house niggers all agree that they were in the verandah behind just before we came up, talking with that English lad. Of course they will be found sooner or later, there is nowhere for them to run to. The thing is, we want to find them ourselves. If anyone else came upon them they would kill them at once."
"Yes, and you will have some trouble if you find them, Monti," one of the other men said. "These blacks have been told that every white must be killed. It is easy enough to work these fellows up into a frenzy, but it is not so easy to calm them down afterwards."
"No, I am quite aware of that, Christophe, and that is why I did not press the search to-day, and why I was not sorry to find that they had got away."
"You see, we have arranged that when the whites are all killed I am to marry madame, that Paul is to take the young one, and that we are to divide the place equally between the three of us."
"If the negroes will let us," the one called Monti said. "I expect they will want to have a say in the business."
"Yes, of course, that is understood. No doubt there will be trouble with them, and there is no saying how things will turn out yet. At any rate we will make sure of the women. I have gone into this more for the sake of getting the girl than for anything else."