"Free! how can we remain free, Hartly, in a land where our colour, which there is no disguising, renders us constantly liable to recognition, to attack, and recapture?"
"True; but if we could only reach the coast, after having so dearly learned circumspection, we might lurk in the woods."
"Without arms?"
"We have done so before. Then we might steal a canoe, or fashion one, and put to sea."
"But the tools and the skins?"
"We could steal both, as these fellows won't lend."
"Escape from this is necessary first: and in the pilfering visits you suggest, we should certainly be retaken, together or singly; and then how miserable would be the reflections of the survivor."
"Tut, Jack! unless we venture we shall never win."
"Ah, Hartly," said I, "at last I have lost all hope!"
"Do not say so; we are both too young to despair," was the sturdy response of the English sailor.