“Fire away, my friends,” cried Mr Talboys.
We obeyed the order with alacrity. I was thinking all the time, however, as to what could have become of Tom and Lucy. In vain I expected my messmate to hasten to his post. Again the blacks were checked. Had they been a minute sooner, the case would have been very different. They calculated, of course, on their friends getting in at the back of the house, and causing a diversion in their favour. For twenty minutes or more we kept loading and firing as fast as we could. Mr Talboys was everywhere, now at one window, now at another, while the clerk and Cato were guarding the back and wings of the house. How the hours had passed by I could not tell, when at length I saw a faint light in the eastern sky. It gradually increased in brightness, and in a wonderfully short time daylight burst upon the world. As the blacks had failed to get into the house during the night, it was less likely that they would succeed during the day. They fired a parting volley, and then, to our great satisfaction, beat a rapid retreat. The search for Lucy and Tom was now renewed.
“Oh, my dear husband, what can have become of her?” cried Mrs Talboy in accents of despair.
That they were not in the house was very certain. I proposed to sally forth and search for them.
“I’ll go myself,” said Mr Talboys. “The rebels will be on the look-out, and you very probably will be captured if you go alone.”
He consented, however, to my accompanying him. We went out at the back door, which Mr Talboys ordered to be closed after us. We had not gone far when we discovered a ribbon, which I knew Miss Lucy had worn on her shoulder.
“She must have been carried off by the blacks when they first burst into the house,” cried Mr Talboys.
“The wretches cannot have had the barbarity to injure her,” I said.
“I don’t know! I don’t know!” answered her father in an agonised tone of voice.
We followed the track of the blacks, which was distinctly marked by the plants and canes being trampled down where they had gone across the garden and plantation, and continued on for some distance. No other trace of Tom or Lucy could we discover. We had to proceed cautiously, as at any time we might come suddenly upon a party of them, when we might find it very difficult to escape. We were, however, both well-armed, with muskets in our hands, braces of pistols in our belts, and swords by our sides, so that we hoped, should we fall in with any enemies, to keep them at bay while we retreated. We looked round on either side, in the expectation of seeing something else that either Lucy or Tom might have dropped; but sometimes I could not help fearing that they might have been killed, and that we should come upon their dead bodies. Still I tried to put away the thought from me, as it was too dreadful I suspect the same idea occurred to