"In the woods yonder are Indians," cried Landless. "They wait but for moonrise, for the appointed hour, to fall upon the plantation. You called me traitor! It is Luiz Sebastian and Trail who are the traitors, the betrayers! They are leagued with the Indians and with the slaves. Look at them, and see that I speak truth!"
The look was sufficient. The dusky mass of slaves had swayed forward with one low, deep, bestial growl. Crouched for the spring, they were yet held in leash by the menace of the pistols, leveled upon them and gleaming in the torchlight, and by the restraining gesture and voice of Luiz Sebastian. In the crowd of servants, now quite separated from the slaves, was noise and confusion, and behind the Turk, standing midway between the parties, was forming a phalanx of villainous white faces—the dissolute, the convict, the refuse of the plantation,—and at his side, suddenly as though sprung from the earth, appeared the evil face and red hair of the murderer of Robert Godwyn.
The silence of the Oliverians, stricken dumb by this new turn of affairs, was broken by Havisham's crying to Landless,—
"What are we to do, friend?"
"Make for the house and defend it and our lives," answered Landless, "but first I call upon all true men among you yonder to leave those murderers and join yourselves to us."
"In the name of the King!" cried the Colonel.
"In the name of God!" said Landless.
Some seven or eight broke from the opposite throng and with lowered heads ran to them across the open space. Landless stooped, and lifting the senseless figure at his feet swung it over his shoulder.
"We are ready, Colonel Verney. Steady, men! Follow me!" He turned to the great house, rising vast and dark, two hundred yards away.
A gigantic, coal black Ashantee chief broke from the throng opposite and, uttering his war cry, bounded across the space between them. Another instant and he would have been upon them, and close after him a yelling pack of hell hounds—the overseer's pistol cracked, and the black giant fell dead. A yell arose from the crowd, but they stood irresolute. For firearms, so strictly kept from servants and slaves, so pre-eminently pertaining to the dominant class, they had a superstitious dread. Four pistols meant four lives picked from the foremost to advance.