"Oh, you don't think they would, hey?" said Mullins, a bit taken aback by my answer. "I thought," he said, "they was kind o' keen to get ye."
The thought of that piece of indelible pencil in my pocket rose in my mind again. "Well, they might if I was to write them a note telling them to."
"Oh," said Mullins, "if you was to write them a note." He ruminated. "Now that would be tellin' them we knew where you was. Well, we'll think about it a day or two."
A day or two, I thought, wouldn't suit our book.
Steve had soon returned, and Mullins went out. Our guard came to see to our bonds; and he twisted his head in a way that told me he had something on his mind.
"These here niggers," he began, "they ain't no cannibals, I reckon?"
"Well, they sure are," said Ray. "I reckon we ought to know."
The man looked to me, as if for my verification.
"Yes, they're cannibals," I told him. And then went on to relate to him something of the doings that night in the forest, recounting how I'd seen Duran with the knife at the throat of the child, and the kettle for the boiling of the human meat. And I was careful to tell him about the grown man who had been buried alive, and in the night disinterred by the voodoos who had torn out his heart and lungs to be devoured. I assured him I had looked on the wife of the man, while she told the story, which had been verified by others. My story, being fact, rang true, and I could see the man was nine parts convinced, and not a little frightened.
A number of things had come under my observation. Our guard kept a knife on a little ledge by the entrance to the cave, which knife he used to cut tobacco for his pipe. And it was the practice to tie our hands tight with thongs whenever the guard wished to leave the cave for a minute or two. While the man, Steve—he was the weakest of the five—smoked his pipe near the entrance and ruminated over the story I'd told him, I whispered to Ray, giving him a plan I had for escape. Our present guard was to remain on till the next morning, when he would be relieved by one called Joseph Glasby.