"Silence, there. No talking!" cried the overseer.
"Let the poor divils talk, sor," said the soldier. "Faix, it's bad enough to put chains on their legs; don't put anny on their tongues."
"If I get you down," thought Abel, "I won't kill you, for that."
"Against orders," said the overseer, good-humouredly. "Well, can you see anything stirring?"
"Not yet, sor; but I hope I shall. Bedad, I'd be glad of a bit o'
sport, for it's dhry work always carrying a gun about widout having a shot."
"Yes; but when you do get a shot, it's at big game, Dinny."
"Yis, sor, but then it's very seldom," said the sentry, with a roguish twinkle of the eye.
"I can't bear this much longer, Bart," whispered Abel. "When I say _Now_! rush at them both with your hoe."
"Wait till he's going to shoot, then," growled Bart.
The overseer bent down, and, sheltering himself beneath the tree, placed his hands out in the sunshine, one holding a roughly rolled cigar, the other a burning-glass, with which he soon focussed the vivid white spot of heat which made the end of the cigar begin to smoke, the tiny spark being drawn into incandescence by application to the man's lips, while the pleasant odour of the burning leaf arose.
"Sure, an' that's an illigant way of getting a light, sor," said the sentry.
"Easy enough with such a hot sun," said the overseer, complacently.
"Hot sun, sor! Sure I never carry my mushket here widout feeling as if it will go off in my hands; the barl gets nearly red-hot!"
"Yah! Don't point it this way," said the overseer, smoking away coolly.
"Well, can you see anything?"
"Divil a thing but that noisy little omadhaun of a bird. Sure, she'd be a purty thing to have in a cage."
Abel's face grew more ghastly as he gazed at Bart, who remained cool and controlled him.
"Bart," whispered Abel, with the sweat rolling off his face in beads, "what shall we do?"
"Wait," said the rough fellow shortly; and he hoed away, with his fetters clinking, and his eyes taking in every movement of the two men; while involuntarily Abel followed his action in every respect, as they once more drew nearer to their task-master and his guard.
"There's a something yonder, sor," said the soldier at last.
"Alligator!" said the overseer, lazily; and Abel's heart rose so that he seemed as if he could not breathe.
"I can't see what it is, sor; but it's a something, for the little burrud kapes darting down at it and floying up again. I belayve it is one of they crockidills. Shall I shute the divil?"
"How can you shoot it if you can't see it, you fool?" said the overseer.
"Sure, sor, they say that every bullet has its billet, and if I let the little blue pill out of the mouth o' the mushket, faix, it's a strange thing if it don't find its way into that ugly scaly baste."
The overseer took his cigar from his lips and laughed; but to the intense relief of the young men, perhaps to the saving of his own life, he shook his head.
"No, Dinny," he said, "it would alarm the station. They'd think someone was escaping. Let it be."
Dinny sighed, the overseer smoked on, and the hot silence of the tropic clearing was only broken by the screaming and chattering of the excited bird, the hum of insects, and the clink-clink, thud-thud, of fetters and hoe as the convicts toiled on in the glowing sun.
They kept as near as they dared to their task-master, and he smiled superciliously as he put his own interpretation upon their acts.
"The artful scoundrels!" he said to himself; "they want me to believe that they always work like this. Well, it helps the plantation;" and he smoked placidly on, little dreaming that every time Abel reversed his hoe, so as to break a clod with the back, the young man glanced at him and measured the distance between them, while he calculated how long to hold the handle of the tool, and where would be the best place to strike the enemy so as to disable him at once.
"You take the soldier, Bart," said Abel, softly. "I'll manage the overseer."
"Right, lad! but not without we're obliged."
"No. Then, as soon as they're down, into the wood, find Mary, and make for her boat."
The heat was intense, the shade beneath the great cotton-tree grateful, and the aroma of the cigar so delicious that the overseer sank into a drowsy reverie; while the soldier gave the two convicts a half-laughing look and then turned to face the jungle, whose depths he pierced with his eyes.
Bart drew a long breath and gazed toward the dark part of the jungle, and there was an intense look of love and satisfaction in his eyes as he tried to make out the place where Mary lay, as he believed, hidden. The sight of the sentry on the watch with his gun ready had ceased to trouble him, for he had told himself that the clumsy fellow could not hit a barn-door, let alone a smaller mark; while Abel seemed to be less agitated, and to be resuming his normal state.
They were not twenty yards from the edge of the forest now, the sentry's back was toward them, and the overseer was getting to the end of his cigar, and watching the watcher with half-closed eyes, and an amused smile upon his yellow countenance.
"Every bullet finds its billet," he muttered to himself; and, stretching himself, he was in the act of rising, when the bird, which had been silent, uttered a shrill, chattering cry, as if freshly disturbed, and the soldier shouted excitedly--
"Theer, sor, I can see it. A big one staling away among the threes.
For the sake of all the saints give the wurrud!"
"Fire, then!" cried the overseer; and the sentry raised his piece to the "present."
Bart Wrigley had not been at sea from childhood without winning a sailor's eyes. Dark as the jungle was, and more distant as he stood, it was not so black that he could not make out the object which had oaken the sentry's notice, and at which he took aim.
One moment Bart raised his hoe to rush at the man; the next he had brought it down heavily on Abel's boulders, sending him forward upon his face, and uttering a cry of rage as he fell.
It was almost simultaneous. The cry uttered by Abel Dell and the report of the sentry's piece seemed to smite the air together; but Abel's cry was first, and disarranged the soldier's aim, his bullet cutting the leaves of the jungle far above the ground.
"Look at that now!" he cried, as he turned sharply to see Abel struggling on the ground, with Bart holding him, and the overseer drawing a pistol front his breast.
"Lie still!" whispered Bart. "It was not at Mary."
Then aloud--
"Quick, here! water! He's in a fit."
As Abel grasped his friend's thoughts he lay back, struggling faintly, and then half-closed his eyes and was quite still.
"It's the sun, sir," said Bart, as the overseer thrust back his pistol and came up. "Hadn't we better get him back to the lines?"
"Yes," said the overseer. "Poor devil! No, no! Back, back!" he roared, signalling with his hands as a sergeant's guard came along at the double. "Nothing wrong. Only a man sick, and Dinny Kelly here had a shot at an alligator."
"An' I should have hit him, sor, if he hadn't shouted. But think o'
that, now! The sun lights gentleman's cigar one minute, and shtrikes a man down the next. But it's better than the yaller fayver, anyhow."