The spot was a very beautiful one. In the background rose ranges of mountains, feathered to their very summits with green foliage. On one side of the grounds were plantations of coffee and sugar. The sandy beach stretched like a line of silver along the edge of the blue water, fringing the cane-fields, which formed a broad expanse of vivid green behind them. Along the coast were lovely little coves and bays, enlivened by neatly laid out mansions of the planters, while numerous fishing and passage-boats, with their raking masts and latteen sails, added life and animation to the scene. A bright and sparkling stream, which found its way down from the mountains above, passed through the plantation, and added much to the refreshing coolness of the scene in that warm climate. A broad verandah ran round the house, on one side of which or the other shade could be obtained at all times of the day. A couple of days had been spent very pleasantly at this abode, when one evening, just as the sun was about to sink through a rain cloud into the distant horizon, an old whiteheaded slave came hurriedly into the presence of his master.
“What is the matter, Caesar,” asked Mr Jefferson, the planter. The old man shook his head.
“Very bad, very bad.”
“Speak, boy; have you lost your wits?” exclaimed the planter impatiently.
“No, massa; but me hear there come one hundred Caribs and many white men, and a whole lot of negroes, to burn the house this night and the plantations; and they swear that they will kill all the people.”
At first the planter was inclined to laugh at this information, so indeed was the Earl; but, on a further examination, the statements of the negro were so clear—and he was so well able to explain how he obtained his knowledge—that they began to think more seriously.
“It is too late now,” observed the planter, “for your lordship to attempt to return to the town; indeed, you would be very likely to fall in with these rebels; but I have several trusty slaves on the estate who I am sure would be ready to lay down their lives for my sake. I will send Caesar to summon them into the house, and as I know that we can make a better stand here than at the residences of any of the other planters, I shall be able to persuade several of them to come here with their families, and assist in the defence of the place.”
“In the mean time we must send off for assistance,” observed the Earl; “I am perfectly ready to agree to your proposition; indeed, I should be very unwilling to attempt to travel with my two young ladies and son at this hour; besides which we should probably be watched, and if we were so, we should eventually be captured by these people. But what could have caused them to think of rebelling?”
“Probably, my lord, emissaries from France have landed on the island, and also there are several discontented settlers of other nations, besides Caribs and blacks, who are always ready for a disturbance, in the hopes of gaining something during it.”
“However,” observed the Earl, who in his youth had been a soldier, “we must make preparations for defending the place; I have had a little experience of that sort of thing in Ireland, and I suspect there is not much difference between the characters we shall have to deal with and those I have been accustomed to in my native country.”