nd in white straw hats. Let them always keep aft, and sit about in
the deck chairs, and always go down below by the main companion.
That will make them think that I am still on board; while if there
is no one on the deck aft they will soon guess that we have landed.

"You understand all that we have been saying, Dominique?"

"Me understand, sar, and tink him bery good plan. Me suah to find
out which way dat rascal hab gone. Plenty of black fellows glad to
earn two dollar to guide us. Dey no money here. Two dollars big sum
to them."

"All right, Dominique, but we won't stick at two dollars. If it
were necessary I would pay two hundred cheerfully for news."

"We find dem widout dat," the black said, confidently. "Not good
offer too much. If black man offered two dollars he bery glad. If
offered twenty he begin to say to himself, 'Dis bery good affair;
perhaps someone else give forty.'"

"There is something in that, Dominique. Anyhow I shall leave that
part of the business to you. As a rule, I shall keep in hiding with
the boatmen and sailors all day. I shall be no good for asking
questions, for I don't know much French, and the dialect the
negroes of these islands speak is beyond me altogether. I cannot
understand the boatmen at all."

"Black men here bad, sar; not like dem in de other islands. Here
dey tink themselves better than white men; bery ignorant fellows,
sar. Most of dem lost religion, and go back to fetish. Bery bad
dat. All sorts of bad things in dat affair. Kill children and women
to make fetish. Bad people, sar, and dey are worse here than at San
Domingo."

There was nothing to do all day, but to sit on deck and watch the
brigantine. Most of the blacks had been landed, and only three or
four sailors remained on watch on deck. Frank and George Lechmere,
in their broad straw hats, sat and smoked in the deck chairs; the
former's eyes wandering over the mountains as if in search of
something that might point out Bertha's hiding place. The hills
were for the most part covered with trees, with here and there a
little clearing and a patch of cultivated ground, with two or three
huts in the centre. With the glasses solitary huts could be seen,
half hidden by trees, here and there; and an occasional little
wreath of light smoke curling up showed that there were others
entirely hidden in the forest.

"Don't you think, Major," George Lechmere said after a long pause,
"that it would be a good thing to have th