"I will not fight a couple of bullies. I yield now, but let me tell you, Humphrey Bold, the law will have something to say to this."
"It will indeed," I said grimly. "Hand over your sword."
He took it by the blade; I placed my musket against the table and reached forward to take the hilt, but with a sudden swift movement he swept the candles to the floor and the room was in total darkness. I sprang forward, but before I could vault over the obstructing table Vetch had dashed through a door behind him that opened on to the veranda. I was after him in an instant, and he escaped me by no more than an arm's length. He had leapt over the rail of the veranda, and I halted for a moment, supposing that he must at least twist his ankles after a fall of some fifteen feet. But I was amazed to see him swarming down one of the pillars that supported the veranda.
I followed him in desperate haste, but the fellow was always very light and nimble, and the fear of death lent him a marvelous new agility. My heavier frame was slower in descending; yet I could not have been much more than fifteen seconds behind him; but he had vanished. There were bushes and palms growing to within a few feet of the house. I ran among them, but could not hear his footsteps, nor had I any means of judging of the direction of his flight. Mad with disappointment, I rushed blindly on, and in a moment collided with a man, whom seizing, I knew by the howl he emitted, no less than by the feel of his bare skin, that I had laid hands on a negro.
"Which way did he run?" I cried, shaking the man in my hot impatience.
"Oh, Massa, I dunno nuffin'," said the trembling wretch.
I hurled him aside and sped off again, very soon encountering other negroes, who in spite of their dread of the dark, had been drawn from their huts, I doubt not, by the noise of the altercation.
"Where is your mistress?" I asked one of them.
He could tell me nothing. I asked the same question of another man whom I met within a few yards.
"I see Missy going to Massa Wilkins' house," he said. "Two men take her."