'Twas about an hour later when I heard the tube pushed up through the hole in the floor. Uncle Moses was below. The critical moment for which I had been longing was come, and my limbs trembled uncontrollably, as they had not done since the time when I saw my first sea fight on the deck of the Dolphin. As we had arranged, I allowed time for the negro to mount the steps and come through the veranda into the room adjoining. Then, gathering my strength, I took three strides across my chamber and dashed my right shoulder against the door. It flew outwards with a crash, the force of my impact being such that the lock tore a great piece out of the jamb.
I rushed blindly into the next room, and lost a few moments in the endeavor to grasp the scene. But my jailors lost more, for the crash had wakened them from a sound sleep and, seamen though they were, the event was so sudden and unexpected that they were taken perfectly aback, and were still looking about them in a dazed bewilderment when Uncle Moses and I threw ourselves upon them. We got them just as they were staggering to their feet. A blow from my fist sent one spinning against the wall; at the same moment the negro, whom I had barely yet seen, caught the other man by the middle and, by a feat of strength which amazed me, hurled him through the doorway into the room I had just quitted. I hoped they were stunned; we could not wait to see, and we had no means of binding them.
The noise must have awakened everybody in the house; indeed, I heard shouts from the rear; no doubt the overseer, and the two buccaneers who had been on guard during the night, would in a few moments be upon the scene. Snatching up the men's muskets and bandoliers that lay on a bench against the wall, we dashed into the veranda, sprang down the steps, and made off across the plantation.
We had not run a hundred yards when we heard a bellow behind us, and, turning, I saw a man at the head of the steps lighting the match for his musket. I was pleased at this, for it would give us another hundred yards' start before he could fire. The muskets of these days can not boast of great precision, but those of fifty years ago were infinitely more cumbersome and clumsy, so that I did not fear he would hit us, unless by some unlucky chance. And indeed, when his weapon flashed, we were quite two hundred and fifty yards away, and the slug went very wide. He would have done better, I thought, to pursue us at once on foot.
But as we sped on side by side, I heard a great horn blast that seemed to set the welkin ablaze. 'Twas the signal that a slave had run away, and I could not doubt that Vetch would immediately suspect what had actually happened. Before long, beyond question, he would be hot upon our traces.
"How far to the forest?" I asked of the negro.
"More'n a mile, massa," he replied.
And then, as I ran, I looked more closely at the man whom fate had made my comrade in this desperate adventure. He was an older man than I had expected; very powerfully made, as his cast of the buccaneer had proved; but his hair was white, and, short as was the distance we had run, I could see that he would soon be laboring for breath. But it was two miles to the big house, as he had called Mistress Lucy's abode, and I did not despair of reaching the edge of forest land before Vetch could make up on us, even if he started the very moment he heard the alarm. If once we gained the forest, we might perhaps blind our trail in a stream, and so gain time enough for our further flight to the swamp.
We were running on a broad track that divided the sugar plantation, and here and there negro laborers who had been roused from their noontide sleep by the horn blast and the shot rose up to see what was afoot. None of them offered to interfere. They stared at us for the most part in silence, one or two of the older people crying out that it was Uncle Moses on the run, and wondering at his companion being a white man.
I took little note of them, for I was already anxious on behalf of the old negro. We had six miles to go; could he hold out? 'Twas two miles from the big house to the house we had left; a horseman could cover the distance in little longer than it would take us to reach the forest; and then we should have but one mile start in a race of six. The odds were heavily against even me, in strong and lusty youth; how much more heavily against Uncle Moses, who was perhaps three times my age!