All, as if by a simultaneous signal, had become silent; as though the earth had opened and swallowed not only the noises, but those who had been causing them!
Unheeding the change, Herbert and Cubina kept on; nor came to a stop until they had passed the smoking remains of the mansion, and stood upon the platform that fronted it.
There halted they.
There was still some fitful light from the burning beams; but the beams of the moon told a truer tale. They illumined a tableau significant as terrible.
Near the spot was a stretcher, on which lay the corpse of a white man, half uncovered, ghastly as death could make it. Close to it were three others, corpses like itself, only that they were those of men with a black epidermis.
Herbert easily identified the first. It had been his companion on that day’s journey. It was the corpse of his uncle.
As easily did Cubina recognise the others. They were, or had been, men of his own band—the Maroons—left by Quaco to guard the prisoners.
The prisoners! where were they? Escaped?
It took Cubina but little time to resolve the mystery. To the practised eye of one who had tied up many a black runaway, there was no difficulty in interpreting the sign there presented to his view.
A tangle of ropes and sticks brought to mind the contrivances of Quaco for securing his captives. They lay upon the trodden ground, cast away, and forsaken.