This was at length successfully managed, and, first taking a careful look all round the hut, to see that they were leaving nothing behind them which might possibly prove useful, they clambered into the cart, and drove slowly off.
Night had by this time fairly set in; the stars were just beginning to peep out from the deepening blue of the cloudless vault above them, and the moon, in her first quarter, and hanging almost in the zenith, was already flooding the scene with her soft silvery radiance. It promised to be a magnificent night for their enterprise, though excessively close and hot; and as they turned into the main road leading into Havana, and left the estate fairly behind them, George and the lad Tom felt their spirits rising and their pulses bounding with joyous anticipation of a speedy return to freedom.
Whilst harnessing the mules, Leicester had rapidly turned over in his mind the pros and cons of the situation, and had come to the conclusion that it would be necessary in the first instance to proceed some three or four miles on the road toward Havana. This necessity arose from the circumstance that the planter’s house stood upon a slight eminence commanding a perfect view of the road for that distance, and as Leicester could not possibly be sure that some one might not be idly watching, from the verandah, the progress of the waggon as long as it remained in view, he deemed it only common prudence to keep to the road until he had passed completely out of the range of any such chance watchers. This done, he intended to turn sharp off and make the best of his way southward, utilising the waggon and mules for as great a distance as possible, and then abandoning them and pressing forward on foot. The distance which they would have to travel was not very great, the island being, according to such information as had been available to him, only some twelve and a half Spanish leagues, or about thirty English miles wide at that part. Thus, if they were fortunate in their choice of a route, so as to be able to use the waggon for the whole distance, they might succeed in reaching the southern shore of the island before their escape was so much as suspected.
George explained all this to Tom as the mules trotted cheerily along the road, and by the time that the plan of escape had been fully elucidated, they had reached a point where they might with perfect safety branch off and make their way to the southward. This they did at once, branching square off to the westward in the first instance, until they were about a mile distant from the road, and completely hidden by the bush from the observation of any one upon it, and then turning in a southerly direction. A dense belt of forest then lay before them, at a distance of some six miles, with a lofty hill-top rising behind it, and toward this latter object George now headed the mules as straight as the scattered clumps of bush would permit.
The soil was very light and sandy, but it was covered with a thick growth of grass, which prevented the mules’ feet or the waggon-wheels from sinking, so that the travelling was nearly, if not quite as rapid as it had been along the road. A sharp lookout was maintained for signs indicative of their approach to the neighbourhood of plantations, and two or three bridle-paths, evidently leading to such, were crossed; but at length they reached the welcome skirts of the forest without having had the least cause to suppose that they had been observed.
In the meantime, however, a heavy bank of thundercloud had been observed rapidly gathering on the southern horizon, and the runaways had scarcely plunged a mile into the forest before the heavens were obscured, and it at once became so pitch-dark that it was utterly impossible for them to proceed. The mules were consequently pulled up, and the three adventurers made what few preparations were possible for their protection from the coming storm.
Soon the low threatening rumble of the thunder was heard, and then, as it rapidly increased in volume of sound, bright flashes of light were seen blazing out beyond the interweaving branches of the trees. The storm, as in all tropical countries, quickly gathered force and intensity, and very soon it was raging in all its fury above and around them. The loud reverberating roll of the thunder was incessant, the lightning flashed with ever-increasing rapidity, and at last the entire atmosphere seemed to be in one continued tremulous glare of unearthly light.
The mules started and quivered, as the lightning-flashes grew more rapid and intense; and finally they became so terrified that George had as much as he could do to restrain them from bolting, and so dashing themselves, the waggon, and its occupants to pieces against the trees.
The storm was at its fiercest when suddenly the party found themselves enveloped in a blinding blaze of greenish-blue light; simultaneously there came a terrific rattling crash, as though the universe had burst asunder; the occupants of the waggon—blinded, and deafened by the dazzling brilliancy of the flash and the tremendous report which accompanied it—felt themselves hurled violently to the earth, and then followed oblivion.