"Where are we going?" asked several voices.
"Well, we must clear out from here," answered Rodwood. "The whole countryside will be raised up against us before morning. We've got a coach and horses at our disposal, so why not go off in that? I'll drive, if no other man wants to handle the ribbons."
"That's all very well," muttered a man named Ned Arch, the convict to whom the file had been given. "That's all very well, but we can't go farther than the end of this stage. They'll be on the lookout there to change the horses, and they'll see at once that something's wrong if we try to drive through without stopping."
"True," answered Rodwood. "We must get off the main road."
It was at this point that I heard Lewis suddenly break in on the conversation.
"If there's no better plan going," he said, "why not make for the coast? We ain't above four miles from Rockymouth, I reckon, and once there I'll undertake to hide you all in a place where you can lie for a time with no danger of being found. I've got friends there to whom, with a bit of care, we can apply for help; and with anything like luck we ought to be safe across the water, every one of us, by this day week."
"Bravo!" cried Rodwood. "Trust a bold 'free trader' for finding a way out of a tight corner. There's our plan of campaign all ready made."
"Look here," broke in the man who had been standing guard over myself and George Woodley. "What's to be done with this pair, I'd like to know? You don't mean to leave 'em sitting here, I suppose?"
"I'd forgotten about the guard and that boy," exclaimed Rodwood. "Take them across the field, and tie them each to a tree in the copse yonder; but gag them first."
Fortunately for us, this suggestion on the part of their leader did not meet with the approval of the other convicts.