The pirates, who with their prisoner and booty, awaited the captain in the road, were drawn up in order, and after saying a few words to an officer, Appadocca gave the word to march, and they silently went down the road. He himself remained behind.
CHAPTER XXVI.
“How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags,
What is’t you do?”
Macbeth.
It was dark, on a certain evening, to which the attention of the reader is now called, when, amidst the rocks and bushes of the mountainous district that flanks Port-of-Spain on the east, and that is known by name of La-vantille, two female forms might be perceived.
They were following a rough and narrow path which led up to the mountains through a thousand rugged ascents and yawning and frightful precipices. The two travellers seemed foot-sore and exhausted, and were compelled now and then to grasp a root or twig of the Guava-bushes that grew here and there to assist them, as they arrived at a more broken and difficult part of the small road. The air was also oppressive—the rocks were still radiating the beams which the sun, that had not long set, had shot full upon them as it was sinking in the west. Nature was hushed: but the distant and faint barking of the cur that guarded some invisible hut, and bayed at some imaginary danger, fell on the ear.
The two persons still followed the path, and ascended still higher and higher up the mountain that overlooks Port-of-Spain.
“You are tired, madame,” said one of the persons, whose dress indicated an humble condition in life, and who was evidently conducting the other.