But this delusion had been dispelled by one thrust of Captain George’s rapier, and the Coromantee’s dark body lay charring amongst the glowing timbers of Madame de Montmirail’s bed-chamber.
The dispositions that he had made, however, accounted for the large force of negroes now converging on the burning house. Their shouts might be heard echoing through the woods in all directions. When George had collected his men, surrounded the two ladies by a trusty escort of blue-jackets, and withdrawn his little company, consisting but of a dozen persons, under cover of the trees, he held a council of war as to the best means of securing a rapid retreat. Truth to tell, the skipper would willingly have given the whole worth of her cargo to be once more on her deck, or even under the guns of ‘The Bashful Maid.’
Slap-Jack gave his opinion unasked.
“Up foresail,” said he, with a characteristic impetuosity: “run out the guns—double-shotted and depressed; sport every rag of bunting; close in round the convoy; get plenty of way on, and run clean through, exchanging broadsides as we go ahead!”
But Smoke-Jack treated the suggestion with contempt.
“That’s wot I call rough-and-tumble fighting, your honour,” he grumbled, with a sheepish glance at the ladies; for with all his boasted knowledge of their sex, he was unaccustomed to such specimens as these, and discomfited, as he admitted to himself, by the “trim on ’em.” “Them’s not games as is fitted for such a company as this here, if I may make so bold. No, no, your honour, it’s good advice to keep to windward of a nigger, and it’s my opinion as we should weather them on this here tack; get down to the beach with a long leg and a short one—half-a-mile and more below the town—fire three shots, as agreed on, for the boat, and so pull the ladies aboard on the quiet. After that, we might come ashore again, d’ye see, and have it out comfortable. What say you, Bottle-Jack?”
That worthy turned his quid, and looked preternaturally wise; the more so that the question was somewhat unexpected. He was all for keeping the ladies safe, he decided, now they had got them. Captain Kidd always did so, he remembered, and Captain Kidd could sail a ship and fight a ship, &c.; but Bottle-Jack was more incoherent than usual—utterly adrift under the novelty of his situation, and gasping like a gudgeon at the Marquise and her daughter, whose beauty seemed literally to take away his breath.
George soon made up his mind.
“Is there any way to the beach,” said he, addressing himself rather to Cerise than her mother, “without touching the road to Port Welcome? It seemed to me, as we marched up, that the high road made a considerable bend. If we could take the string instead of the bow we might save a good deal of time, and perhaps escape observation altogether.”
The Marquise and her daughter looked at each other helplessly. Had they been Englishwomen, indeed, even in that hot climate, they would probably have known every by-road and mountain path within three leagues of their home; but the ladies of France, though they dance exquisitely, are not strong walkers, and neither of these, during the months they had spent at Cash-a-crou, had yet acquired such a knowledge of the locality as might now have proved the salvation of the whole party.