condition, and to give you fair and honest
work to the best of our powers; but mind you, if one finger be laid on
us in anger, if so much as the end of a whip touch one of us, we have
sworn that we will slay him so ventures, and you also, should you
countenance is, even though afterward we be burned at the stake for
doing it. That is our bargain; see you that you keep to it."

So stern and determined were Harry's words, so fierce and haughty his
tone, that the planter and his overseer both turned pale and shrank
back. They saw at once the manner of men with whom they had to deal, and
felt that the threat would be carried out to the fullest. Muttering some
inarticulate reply, the planter turned and entered the house, and the
overseer, with a dogged, crestfallen look, led the way to the slave
quarters. The place assigned to them was a long hut, the sides lightly
constructed of woven boughs, with a thick thatch overhead. Along one
side extended a long sloping bench, six feet wide. This was the bed of
the slaves.

An hour afterward the other inmates of the hut entered. They consisted
of four white men who had been kidnaped as boys, and two who had been
apprentices, sent out, as Harry soon learned, for their share in the
rising in the city, which he had headed. The negroes on the estate, some
twenty in number, were confined in another hut. There were, besides,
four guards, one of whom kept sentry at night over the hut, while
another with a loaded firearm stood over them while they worked. The
garrison of the island consisted, as Harry had learned before landing,
of two hundred and fifty soldiers, besides the militia, consisting of
the planters, their overseers and guards, who would number altogether
about five hundred men.

The next day the work in the fields began. It consisted of hoeing the
ground between the rows of young sugar canes and tobacco plants. The sun
was extremely powerful, and the perspiration soon flowed in streams from
the newcomers. They worked, however, steadily and well, and in a manner
which gave satisfaction even to their master and his overseer. Harry
had impressed upon his two men and Mike the importance of doing nothing
which could afford their employer a fair opportunity for complaint. He
would not, Harry felt sure, venture to touch them after the warning he
had given, but he might send one or all of them back to the town, where
they would be put to work as refractory slaves on the fortifications,